


The Blood Drenched Tide

by Turandokht



Category: 20th Century CE RPF, A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Historical RPF
Genre: 19th Century, 20th Century, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood Mages, Blood Magic, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Cheating, Crossdressing, Developing Relationship, Dubious Morality, Dysfunctional Relationships, Earth, Edwardian Period, Every Tag Comes True Eventually, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Flying, Food, Food Issues, Food Porn, Ghosts, High Valyrian (ASoIaF), House Targaryen, Ideology, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Infidelity, Lesbian Character, Magic, Magical Realism, Non-Explicit Sex, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism, RPF, Rating May Change, Recreational Drug Use, Valyria, Valyrian Steel Swords, War, Women in the Military, World War I, historical RPF - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:06:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 24,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22040797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turandokht/pseuds/Turandokht
Summary: Queen Tyanna would do anything to save her daughter from the prophecy she read in Princess Daenys' book of fates which had predicted the Doom of Valyria and now, she realised, also predicted the death of her own daughter as a child if she sat the throne. Abandoning her own life to her husband's fury, she gave her to a dusky-skinned woman in a city of soot and ash that her magic had conjured a passage to.A Dragon alone in the world is a terrible thing--but Daena at least had the dream of being an aeronaut.This is the story of a Targaryen Sorceress on the cusp of the First World War, with her dead grandmother whispering in her mind.It is played straight from magical realism with realistic depictions of violence, period language, and extremist politics, be warned. I decided to count the 20th century as "Modern Setting" compared to medieval Westeros. The actual number of chapters is indeterminate, but likely to be /more/ than the currently estimated 100.A lot of historical people show up in this story in the style of most alt-hist works.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 12





	1. The Cities of Soot

**London, 1894**

Alighting at King William St. Station at the then end of the line, two women joined the masses of Victorian travelers coming off of the C&SLR underground terminus within the City. One of them was dressed poorer than the other, with a hood pulled up against the ghastly condition of the coal-soot air. The other was dressed as a proper upper-class Victorian lady. They might be Lady and servant, but the carriage of the hooded woman was that of no servant. They headed into the shadows at her behest, their conversation continuing.

"She should be a Queen," the woman said, "but it was written, I tell you, that she would die if she did. I will have her live."

"And you will not come with her?" The Lady might have been dressed in full Victorian finery, but her skin was a rich dark brown and her hair was dark black, wavy, with wide black eyes. Her hauteur and her carriage showed that indeed she was a woman of breeding, but this land rested uneasily on her as a homeland.

Behind them, a white woman in clothes as fine as the Lady's trailed them nervously, glancing around to see if they were being followed; she was notably older.

The hooded woman shrugged. "I must find a way to undo the _geas_ , if I can, you understand, she could take the throne. Some trick. Or I will hold it, and her eldest after her. It is the custom her father struggles to uphold. She will have books, she is learning to read and write..."

"A girl of four?" The Lady asked.

"Dragons grow up quick," the hooded woman, with her dark curly hair and strong features, shrugged expressively. Her eyes were as black as the Lady's.

"Dragons..." HRH Princess Catherine Hilda Duleep-Singh, daughter of the deposed Maharaj of the Punjab, glanced to her former governess and current lover behind them. Lina. _What has God put upon me?_

But there was no answer, she was the Princess. She had to make the decision.

"Here, it's enough gold to save your family manor from the auction at your father's debts," the woman said sharply, insistently. "To make her and you as her parents rich till the end of your days. She should be a Queen. She must be raised by Royal Blood!"

"And if..."

The woman laughed. "My life is forfeit," she choked in the coal dust. "Get her out of this city, Princess Catherine. She needs a better place to live when she comes."

**Dresden, 1909 -- Königlich-Sächsisches Polytechnikum**

Anton Schafer-Junger and Frederik-Wilhelm von Schleicher were two third-year students at the Royal Saxon Polytechnic, and they had both arrived out of at least a little bit of prurient interest. Women carrying on in University was rare enough as it was, the men of the Polytechnic were still getting used to womens' graduating classes, and particularly those which included some women who were now graduating in engineering. The first had been in 1906 only.

This group of good femmes, though, was at arms. They were dueling. Not in the University style, of course, that was absolutely forbidden to women. But classic dueling with protective gear for points, that was another matter another entirely. And in their artful women's dueling dresses with heart-targets pinned to the breast, two were squaring off at that point.

This was a duel with the sabre, and that was rare enough for women, not the lighter epee or foil. They had come, and their eyes were naturally drawn to, the woman on the right. She was tall, and muscular, and not yet twenty. Her body was all alabaster skin and perfect features to rival a Roman marble of Diana. Her hair, sharply pulled up, contrasted with her blonde rival; it was not quite blonde, and not quite the gray or white of an old woman, but somewhere in between, this sharp cascade of gray-dusted platinum. It was stunning.

The two went at each other, and in a sharp flurry of moves, blades struck and moved across each other. Each move the woman on the right made was one driven of physicality to rival any man's, and a kind of economy of force which Anton was almost astonished at, it was the kind one normally saw among veteran fighting men. She demolished her opponent with a score to take the match in the course of two minutes.

"She's unstoppable," Frederik-Wilhelm murmured with a coyly bemused grin as he looked briefly to his friend and then back to the woman. "I mean that, really fairly unstoppable. More experienced women could take her when she started, but she has won three hundred matches in earnest since then."

"That's amazing," Anton shook his head. "Is she even white, Frederik?"

"Now that's an interesting question. You know, her mother is Princess Catherine Hilda Duleep-Singh, the exiled Sikh Princess. But she's adopted, under law. If you listen to her tell it, she is descended from an old line of Armenian nobility exiled for opposing the Tsar in the Caucasus over some petty matter, and her line extends from Tigranes the Great. Thus the name."

"Targarioni," Anton repeated.

The word caught the attention of the young woman as she pulled off her mask, and haunting eyes of lilac were revealed. Many people thought she was an albino until she didn't burn in the sun.

"Princess Daena Duleep-Singh Targarioni," she corrected, and setting aside her sabre stepped over to the side with a flourish, extending her hand; both of the soi-gallants kissed it. "I must say I'm thankful for the kind words," she offered, and her eyes glinted, "however, I am going to Paris as soon as I graduate in two months."

"To Paris? By yourself, Your Highness?"

"Why not!" Her eyes were bright, and wide, and had some queer hunger in them. "Woman has flown aerocraft on her own, Sirs, and so I shall be an aeronaut!" A pause, a beat skipped: "And so will any man who wishes to propose!" It was with a delightfully bemused grin, for in truth, she had no intention at all. A Princess was fit for higher men than the sons of Junkers, after all.


	2. Elsass/Alsace

**_Alsatian Frontier, August 1909_ **

" _Angleterre_ ," the woman in the first class drawing room said as she presented her passport with the Lion. The alabaster of her skin, her lilac eyes and her platinum silver-blonde hair were all so striking. The word was said without the slightest of an accent, and the Customs Inspector smiled.

"Ah, Madame. An Englishwoman, leaving Deutschland? Very good then, welcome in the spirit of the _Entente Cordiale_. To whence are you headed?"

"Paris, of course," she answered, and presented a card with an address. "My lodging in the city, Sir."

He took the card and noted it down on his ledger as he looked at the passport and his eyes widened at the name. Daena Duleep-Singh Targarioni. He would have thought her white for anything.

"You are the finest Aryan Lady of all of the _Raj_ , I must say," he offered courteously. She was traveling under a British passport, not a Colonial one.

"Thank you," Daena answered graciously. She didn't mention, considering the fastidious impoliteness of the border guards to the German passengers of the night train, the fact that she also had a German passport, or that she had just finished graduating from a German university.

"Is there any-thing that you wish to declare?"

"I have a trunk of family heirlooms," Daena answered precisely, "in the baggage car. They have a personal value to me and I believe their value would be about two thousand francs in materials." She glanced around the car, and smiled wryly, "and two thousand Goldmarks to convert to Francs, and a thousand francs and five hundred pounds in instruments."

It was not an unreasonable sum for someone in a First Class Drawing Room to have. "I am surprised you are unaccompanied," the Inspector confessed as he wrote out the excise, and Daena matter-of-factly paid it.

"I will hire a maid in Paris, of course," she answered.

"Is there anything else?"

"I have a small pistol..."

"Oh, nothing to worry about there; you are a Lady traveling alone," he winked. "All right then. You're admitted."

Daena flashed a smile and waited for him to leave to the next room before she closed the doors, and then sank back into her compartment, before taking advantage of the stillness of the train to open up the small closet in the drawing room and look through her evening clothes. In truth, the value of what she was taking with her was much, much more, but there was no need for that. She slipped Farstryder out of the back of the tiny, narrow closet and kissed the pommel. _You'll never be far from me_ , she thought of the sword.

Settling on what she was going to wear, she started to dress. They would make the first call from the restaurant car shortly after the customs post let them get underway, and then it would be overnight toward Paris with enough time for breakfast before they arrived at the _Gare de l'Est_ late next morning.

Pulling off her coat, she looked at herself in the mirror. Within the standards of European clothing, she kept the K's, her long hair pinned up to be a bit more manageable, bracelet, the dagger pressed close to her waist. She dressed in the more practical and comfortable of the finer fashions of Paris with the help of a seamstress in Berlin who knew the latest styles, so she could comfortably dress herself on the trip to Paris and come off as respectable even though her finances were tighter than she should have liked.

She didn't want to spend the last of her Mother's gold unless she really needed it. She was saving it for the opportunity to do something grand. A copy of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King was jumbled up with a few other light reads about Sarawak and Baron von Shtempel at Samarkand. _I wouldn't chase the local women, so I wouldn't get overthrown in Kaffiristan,_ she thought with idle defiance when her brain lit with recognition of the title, though its conquest by the Afghan Emir had removed that dream, unless perhaps the people longed for liberation and the restoration of their old paganism.

The train lurched into motion again, and Daena shook her head and started dressing herself for dinner. There were adventures to be had in Paris, too. The card she had given the Customs Inspector was for the Salon of Natalie Clifford Barney, the famous American named La Amazone: 20, Rue Jacob.

The second card she had was for the address of _L'Aéro-Club de France_. Memories of dragons flitted in her mind, from days when she was four and five years old, and they ached, with eggs so far away they were in another place, a world like a dream. But in front of her was something very, very real.

She'd make it work. She was, after all, a Targaryen, and the sky was her's.


	3. La Amazone

_**20 Rue Jacob, 1909.**_ **(1)**

“Lady Natalie,” Daena curtsied politely. “Thank you for giving me your hospitality.”

The thirty-three year old American in front of her with sandy brown-blonde hair regarded the ninteen year old in front of her with considerable interest. “You’re welcome, Your Highness, but I couldn’t resist someone writing such an interesting letter. Also, I’m not a Lady, you know.”

Daena flushed. “Well, many say you might as well be, for an American, since you hold court so well here.”

“For an American.” She tittered with laughter. “Honest of you, dear.”

Daena flushed harder. “I confess my uncles were perfect Tories.”(2)

“But I understand your aunt—not so much,” Natalie countered smoothly. “I can do my own research, after all.”

“...We’re not in the Almanach,” (3) Daena protested, though she accepted an offer to sit, and coffee from the Press.

“It’s not the only way to find out about families.” Natalie leaned back with her own coffee, the height of glamour with fur around her neck in a light dress. “I am curious about the family of your birth, though.”

“Armenian,” Daena began. “We are directly descended from the House of Tigranes, who conquered the Near East and fought the Romans to a standstill. But my parents died when I was very little, my father was exiled by the Tsar...”

“For?” Natalie grinned.

“Plotting to liberate the rest of Armenia,” Daena answered, meeting her eyes levelly.

“Well.” A shrug. “You don’t look anything at all like an Armenian. In fact, you don’t really look anything at all like any race I’ve seen at all, though your bone structure is Caucasian enough. A bit heavy so I suppose Caucasus is right enough. Are you an albino then?”

“I can stand the sun,” Daena replied defensively; she had gotten used to that charge over time.

“Rather important for an aviatrix. You’ll hear that one many times,” Natalie answered sharply. “You’re in a man’s field as it is with your engineering degree. Aristocrat or not, you’ll hear much worse. Shrug it off, never complain. Confidence is what wins you some freedom in this world, Princess.”

“I won’t forget the lesson,” Daena repeated assiduously. “I admit to curiosity. I want to learn.”

“You know a lot already. You will learn a lot from my friends. Here, as I agreed, you can stay until you find your own room somewhere.” Natalie rang a bell. “We can talk tonight, when I have my salon.”

“Of course. Thank you.” Daena rose, and followed the servant away.

_She wants you, you know. You are young and flawless and unique._

Daena stiffened faintly as she went back to her room, but waved a hand idly when the servant turned back to her with a questioning look in her eye. “It’s nothing.”

It was not nothing. _Yes, Grandmother, I could tell._

 _She’s much older than you, and you would never be her only one,_ the voice of Visenya Targaryen whispered into her granddaughter’s mind.

 _I need to learn somehow,_ Daena countered with a certain heat.

 _Better to just wait. It’s bitterness and loneliness,_ Visenya answered with a sigh in her mind. _You’ll need to marry a man someday, anyway, to have the heirs of the line. When one of Royal blood is available for you._

 _And I can’t follow my heart before then?_ Daena countered as she settled down in her room. Her trunks had already been brought up to it, and she started to unpack.

_The Shepherdesses on Dragonstone just gave me memories to remind me of what I couldn’t have._

_You always bring that up, and then you don’t want to talk about it!_ Daena slumped back on the pillows and held her head.

 _When you’re dead, all you have is regrets,_ Visenya’s voice almost sneered. _So I’m not going to let you die. But I will indulge my regrets._

 _I will do as I please with my loves. When I have a country, then I will marry._ There was a quiet sigh of her own bitter longing. _None of them will be Valyrians, woman or man, after all. I will have to make do with the beauty of the races of Earth._

 _I do regret that you are alone,_ Visenya agreed. _But someday, there will be children, and then... And then you won’t be alone._

 _And we’ll fly together,_ Daena answered, her thoughts drifting off to the marvelous flying machines of this world. She grabbed some of the length of her immensely long silver-blonde hair in her hands and stared up at the ceiling. The thoughts of flying consumed her.

_Those contraptions are **incredibly** dangerous, Daena, and..._

_I am a Dragon, give me a Dragon, or give me an aerocraft, but either way I’m going to fly,_ Daena shot back. _And I’ll love who I want, too._

 _Fine. Don’t listen to me._ The voice echoed frustration. _But you are the only one of my blood._

 _And I will live and die according to the will of God,_ Daena answered, holding her head. Grandmother’s frustration could **hurt.** But unlike the grandmother whose whispers in her mind told her of the magic of Old Valyria and the mother whose books were written of shadow and blood, Daena had been raised a Sikh, and there were times she took pleasure at reminding her grandmother of her moral uprightness.

 _You are in a den of vipers,_ Visenya laughed knowingly.

Daena, ignoring her, got ready for the night.

\-------------

She was dressed ravishingly in the best Paris fashions when she arrived to the salon that evening. It was a more laid back experience than the wild soirees that Natalie had been known before in the time before La Amazone (4) arrived in Paris.

Eyes, both male and female, intellectuals and writers, followed her. She was new, and she was _young,_ and she was attractive, muscular in a feminine way, her grandmother’s heir in physique. Her long hair was coiffed up under a small hat as a deference to the Sikh faith of her adoptive mother, and bangles hung down on her wrists as an eastern touch which belied the religious sincerity behind one of them.

“My boarder,” La Amazone introduced grandly, “Princess Daena Duleep-Singh Targarioni, of descent through the Royal Houses of the Punjab and Armenia.”

The introduction brought some surprise; there were a fair number of Republicans in the room, though all were courteous, though lately, Daena found herself in front of Philippe Berthelot (5), explaining that she was an engineer and had come to Paris to learn to fly.

“You are already more useful than twenty of your peers, M’lady. Ravishing,” he chuckled indulgently.

Shortly enough Paul Claudel (6), another of the right-wing ideologues who inhabited the salon of lesbians and literary figures despite their politics, who rescued her graciously. “My dear girl, you are very ambitious. I think you should like to meet the Italian poet, Gabriele d’Annunzio. He has also taken an interest in aviation. And, perhaps, a fellow countryman...”

He turned to present her to J.C. Mardrus (7), the Catholic Armenian who bowed politely and kissed her hand.

That was a test of her cover story. Daena smiled grandly and shifted tongues. “ _A Pleasure, Sir. My parents told me a little of picturesque ruin when I was a child, but I know far too little of the homeland of my blood, though my mother provided me every resource she could.”_ As she continued with the introductions, the name of d’Annunzio was now firmly fixed in her head.

Later on in the evening she found herself back sitting with Natalie. “Do you have any musical talents, dear?”

“...I might,” Daena answered almost shyly. Unlike most of the others she didn’t drink according to her religion. “I can play the Sitar.”

“Oh _lovely,_ an instrument of the orient. Do you have it with you?”

“Yes, I can go bring it down.”

“Do so! We will all love it.”

A few minutes later, Daena descended, to find a group had clustered around expectantly; she took a nervous breath, sitting down to fold her legs in lotus, and plucked the strings to begin, with a dupatta draped over her shoulder and through her hair instead of the hat, now. The clear and beautiful sounds showed her a real talent, and she quickly found herself with a not insubstantial audience.

“The Princess won’t drink, but she certainly plays!” Someone called out; Daena smiled shyly, and carried on.

Then she found an alternative pressed up to her as she finished the song, a pipe of hashish. For a moment, she paused. It was stereotypical, but not completely wrong. Unlike tobacco and drink and other drugs, cannabis was not _inherently_ wrong, the Nihang consumed it (8)...

 _Daena...!_ Her grandmother’s voice warned her, but it had the opposite effect.

She took a smoke, and another, and the night blended together in a pleasant, wild blur of attention which pleased her very much.

Perhaps it was not too much of a surprise that when she regained her senses, she was in La Amazone’s bed, and felt _glorious._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Natalie Clifford Barney had recently moved in and reestablished her salons as more laid-back affairs.  
> (2) Prince Frederick Duleep-Singh had an upside-down picture of Cromwell at his toilet. Conversely her aunt Sophia was an ardent suffragette.  
> (3) The Almanach de Gotha was incredibly restrictive in the original publication. Though Indian Royal houses had been included in limited cases starting in 1887, mediatized families like the Duleep-Singh which had been deposed from the Punjab in the 1840s would definitely not be included, and with even the Biron not be included, any obscure Armenian noble family of supposed royal descent was definitely Right Out. This makes it easier for Daena.  
> (4) "La Amazone" is Natalie Clifford Barney's nickname, for the record.  
> (5) Berthelot was an ardent Republican French diplomat.  
> (6) Claudel, conversely, was a conservative catholic who for whatever reason liked to hang out with the lesbians.  
> (7) A noted translator.  
> (8) Daena tries to be a practicing Sikh from her adoptive mother's instruction; Nihang Sikhs sometimes consume bhang, edible cannabis in the subcontinent, but she's already stretching this by smoking hashish.


	4. The Aeronauts

**20 Rue Jacob – II**

La Amazone was a vigorous lover in the prime of life. Daena had never before slept with anyone before; her mothers had managed to keep her pure to the age of 19. But no more. She was giddy with it, with Natalie’s tender but aggressive skill, with the warmth of two women together, with their glorious nudity in the grand bed of her room the next morning.

Sex magnified the experience of the hashish. It felt like a new world had dawned inside of her mind, and she couldn’t get enough of thinking about it. She could remember every movement of Natalie’s hands, her fingers, her lips... A shiver ran through her as she pulled on a light dress and followed the woman down to her breakfast.

They sat down together and Daena looked up to the older woman as they were served a boiling hot press of coffee, milk, brioche, butter and preserves. The French breakfast was much lighter than that of her adolescent years in England. A bottle of Apollinaris (1) was uncorked between them and Natalie’s maid served them in neat crystal. The sun coming in from the courtyard threw shafts of light across the bubbling water as Daena took a sip, strong enough to be bright and vivid.

“I still can’t believe I’ve slept with a woman who doesn’t drink,” Natalie laughed at last. “You were as enthusiastic as a fish to water, my Princess.”

“It runs in the family,” Daena answered gamely. “Both sides, my paternal grandmother and my mother, to some extent.”

An indulgent smile met her in return. “You could have your pick of the women of Paris.”

“You might say I already have,” Daena grinned. _And you didn’t want me to do this why, Grandmother?_

A frustrated silence met her inquiry. Daena knew that her grandmother had, at some level, enjoyed it as much as her, though she tried not to dwell on that, it seemed like it couldn’t have been quite private, and never would be. _Oh well, she’d just be entranced..._

_Don’t. You. Dare._

“Base flattery is a bit of a bore, dear. You’re too interesting for it.” Natalie raised a piece of brioche to her lips.

Daena flashed a bland smile. “You were so gentle in showing me,” she said softly. “I will be more interesting, then. As I planned, I shall dress, and then head to the _Aero-Club._ It’s time to make my introductions there.”

“You don’t have a bone fit for rest in all of your body, do you?”

“A poison of my English upbringing,” Daena replied nonchalantly.

“Oh don’t be such a bother, girl. I’m American, as strange as that seems now. I certainly never thought of a _Princess_ when I was little...”

Daena blushed. “Well, I am very far from a proper Princess.”

“That’s the best kind, then.” A pouty smile was directed her way for a moment, as they finished eating. “Come on, Daena, and get yourself ready, then. I wouldn’t want to keep you out of the skies for even a moment.”

Daena finished her coffee and rose. “Thank you. Do you have any advice for me in dealing with the _Aero-Club_?”

“Don’t think anyone will teach you, unless they like you. And are inclined to. There is Delagrange, the papers said he let a woman fly an aerocraft in Italy last year... I think it was Peltier, another sculptor.” (2)

“Thank you.” Daena grinned giddily as Natalie planted a kiss on her cheek.

“Go, soar with the eagles!”

“Dragons!” Daena responded immediately, and, laughing, went upstairs to dress.

************************

_She wants you for something, Daena._

Daena sighed as she stepped out onto the bustling Paris street. _Yes, yes. You loved it as much as i did! Lord protect me, but it’s very weird to think my Grandmother..._

_Daena!_

Daena grimaced, and then presented a bright expression. From skirt to hat, boots to gloves, she was done up perfectly as a proper Paris lady. It took some of the edge off her grandmother’s words. _Really, Grandmother, yes, she does something. She wants Me._

 _She wants women in general,_ Visenya groused, _and she wants something more from you, too._

 _The intuition of a ghost?_ Daena looked around at the heights of the buildings, balconies and Cafés. Natalie Clifford Barney’s salon was only three blocks from the Seine, though Daena ended up walking to the Rue l’Echaudé and then two blocks down to the Boulevard Saint-Germain to board the Paris Métro’s M4 line at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. She had apparently come onto Earth through a Metro tunnel, if her adoptive mother’s story was right...

 _It is,_ Visenya supplied with a rather intentional excessive level of helpfulness.

...And Daena still loved them, paying and descending to the train platforms. The dense masses of busy Paris surrounded her, and she was just one among countless women and men, though certainly, many paid more attention to her than others; she was too distinctive to ever escape that.

A few changes of trains and less than an hour later, with a brisk walk at the end, the sun still rising up into the September sky, she stood before the Aero-Club, and took a deep breath before stepping inside to go to the desk.

“Mademoiselle? How may I be of assistance?” The clerk asked.

“Monseiur,” Daena presented her card. “I was hoping that I might have an introduction from the Aero-Club to Monseiur Delagrange.”

“Your... Highness,” he answered, looking at the card, and then at her.

It was the same experience again. Her name marked her as foreign. Her appearance was unusual enough—by features most would call her a member of the Caucasian Race, but her hair and eyes were so distinctive that she could also be thought to be an albino upper-caste Indian with her mother’s name. Daena always refused to hide it and always took pride in it; she was a Sikh and a Punjabi in her heart now, as much as a member of the _Targario Lentrot._

“A moment, please.” He stepped back, and she waited for what was a minute, and then five, pacing in the pleasant entryway with its gilt and wood Empire style until he finally returned.

“Monseiur Delagrange’s post,” the man offered.

“Thank you.” Taking the card with the information on it, she paused. “Monseiur, is there anyone at the Aero-Club who might give me lessons in ballooning?” That was hardly her object, but it was a good way to start.

The man grimaced and frowned, realising what her real object was—not merely some inquiry into the artist and flier, but lessons. To be an Aviatrix. He replied with a gallic shrug. “I suggest, Your Highness, that you write to Monseiur Delagrange.”

Daena frowned, but then forced it to a smile. _I won’t get discouraged. Natalie knew his name, Monseiur Delagrange was always the best chance to teach me._ “Thank you, Monseiur.” She turned, a Princess did not curtsy for a desk-clerk, and headed out.

Still, unshaken, she couldn’t wait; taking a piece of paper from her purse, she hastily composed a note to Delagrange and then went straightaway to the nearest office of the French Post that a man on the street gave her directions to, and mailed it at once. But nor would she leave it only to a letter. She returned to the Métro, eager to query Natalie; she was sure one of her friends must know such a famous sculptor as Monseiur Delagrange through the salon and get her an introduction in person straightaway. _And, if I must, I’ll even take an advertisement in the papers asking for someone to teach me to balloon. But I’ll need a cut-out,_ she thought quickly before Visenya could grow cross, _as they would be unseemly for a Princess. I shall have to convince one of Natalie’s friends._ Around her, music played, people bustled, and Paris lived. It was a marvelous time to be alive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) A brand of "table water", that is, carbonated mineral water, very popular at the time, and originating in Germany. It is less well known today than San Pellegrino and Perrier.  
> (2) Léon Delagrange and Thérèse Peltier, both sculptors and both pilots.


	5. From Rue Jacob to Passy

**From Rue Jacob to Passy**

Daena’s grandmother was right about something: She was not Natalie’s only lover, and likely never would be. Daena had spent the next few nights after La Amazone’s salon very much alone, as she entertained other lovers. Daena had to content herself in the enthusiasm for her skilled Sitar playing which soon garnered an offer for her to go to London to meet with Ananda Coomaraswamy (1), which she demured; Daena already had before her mothers had moved to Germany to insure her a good education and get away from the colonial political scene in London, and allow Lina to be closer to her family.

Daena distinctly remembered the eyes of Isadora Duncan (2) on her from the night before. The woman had, after seeing her play the Sitar, convinced her to dance with her sword, which was the one sort of dance that Daena was comfortable with; afterwards she had offered “my dear, I could teach you to be one of the finest dancers in Europe;” but Daena, of course, immediately demurred. She was meant to be a Queen, not a member of a traveling carnival troupe. Isadora was clearly not fully dissuaded by her remarks, but had gone on to talk about her aunt Princess Sophia and her suffragette work, instead. Daena had taken from that conversation that Isadora was probably rather left-wing.

Coming down to take breakfast with Natalie, she was seized by the desire to smile demurely as she ate her bread and jam. “Have you reached out to Monseiur Delagrange for me, yet?” She kept the stupid teenager’s impulse to try and seduce Natalie into sleeping with her again back in check and focused instead on her ambition to fly. She wasn’t letting anyone—La Amazone or Isadora Duncan or Coomaraswamy or anyone—come between her and the control stick of a Bleriot-XI.

“I sent a letter containing an introduction and saying that you had written to him,” Natalie answered. “But actually, Daena, there was something I wanted to talk to you about first. A favour, if you would. I’ll travel to call on Monseiur Delagrange in person if you’ll take care of it for me.”

“A favour for a favour...” Daena leaned back and took a drink of her table water. “That’s fair, and I am your guest and thankful for your hospitality, too. What do you need me to do?”

_Wait for it..._

Daena sighed.

“There’s an old... A former lover of mine, she was... I was like her wife, really. Her name is Renée Vivien, and she’s been hurting herself a great deal lately,” Natalie answered. “We’ve been apart for eight years and I still love her with all of my heart.”(3)

Daena’s youthful infatuation collapsed, almost visibly.

“Oh, you’re still _lovely,_ dear, and _lovely_ in bed, and so...” She waved a hand gently. “It’s just... Renée means a great deal to me, and I desperately am worried about her. Please try to get her to come back... Any way you see fit. Our mutual friends have all failed at it, but perhaps a newcomer with such a marvelous and strange story as your’s will light some interest in her heart. She’s living in the City, here’s her address,” Natalie finished, scrawling it out on a piece of paper and handing it over. “...Will you?”

Daena picked her pride up off the ground, metaphorically, and sighed, biting her lip. She wanted to grimace at the smirk of her grandmother in the back of her mind. “Yes, of course, Natalie. I will call after her, and make sure she is well, and try to bring her back to you.”

“Thank you very kindly. I leave it to your discretion. You are very smart, after all, Princess.”

“I thought you said something about idle flattery,” Daena answered, shaking her head. “Well, I am going to dress for the day. I will let you know how it happens.” She rose, and glanced at the paper. Renée lived in Passy (4), one of the finest neighborhoods in all of Paris, and Daena hardly minded the prospect of taking the airs there.

Daena dressed in some of her finer day dress, not something she’d wear to a formal event, but definitely something she would want to be seen in Passy walking about, and settled on one of her round hats, and then set out, taking the Métro as far as she could, again, and then spending some time enjoying the sights of the finest of Paris and orienting herself. There was an object overhead, and she looked up to see a balloon, and followed it for as long as she could, taking her time, and wishing that she were in it instead.

Finally, tearing her eyes away from the balloon, she headed to the apartment, with balcony, which was the lodging of Renée Vivien. There were many different ways she could have gone about Natalie’s desire for her to contact the woman, but something told her just waiting around directly would be adequate. The bell, however, produced no response, and Daena wandered back out.

A woman who looked far older than she should—who looked terrifyingly emaciated, in fact—was approaching. She was indifferently but grandly dressed, very androgynous, to the point Daena had hesitated to think her a woman at first. Her skin was brilliantly pale. She looked up from under her hat, and Daena looked back to her.

Those haunted, poisoned eyes entranced Daena. The woman, for her part, widened her own eyes, sunken into her skull, and stared.

“Your eyes... They are nearly violet, how is that possible, they’re not red, they’re _violet..._ A beautiful shade of it, too,” the woman said, approaching, with an ethereal intensity which entranced Daena as she approached. “Are you an angel of death who has come for me?”

“No,” Daena answered, and drew herself up and tried to bow gallantly, despite her dress. “Princess Daena Duleep-Singh Targarioni, at your service. Madame Vivien, I presume.”

The woman’s face slowly opened into a smile which was still entrancing, despite the element of horror in it. “Yes, that’s so. Princess? A Princess of my own from the east? That is almost as lovely as your being an angel of death. Come with me, Princess.”

“As you wish,” Daena fell in with her, mindful of her cane, as the woman limped her way up into her apartment. _God, but what has befallen her..._

_Drugs, Daena, just like they could befall **you** in this social set. And heavy drink, and a suicide attempt. _

Daena grimaced at her mother’s words, acknowledging now their truth, but turned a gracious smile back to Renée Vivien, and helped her with the door.

“You’ll forgive the lack of hospitality, I hope, but I have no food in the house, only drink,” Renée said idly as she moved to settle herself onto a couch.

Daena secured the door and followed her. “I understand... Where do you take your meals, then?”

“Oh really, nowhere these days, it is a pain and a bother to eat... Shift a bit, won’t you, my Princess? I want to see your eyes in the light.”

Daena obliged her.

“That is... I don’t understand how anyone could be so lovely. My Violet... You are like my Violet come again,” Renée stared for a while. “A Princess, from the east...” She settled back against the couch and started with eyes that left Daena feeling like she were being stared straight through. “I see in you a warrior. Your muscles are supple, even if your curves are filled out. You would have to put real effort into passing for a man, but if you did, you would laugh on the front line in battle, would you not? I think you are more of an Amazon than dear Natalie.”

“Perhaps I am, however... It is Natalie who sees you as her wife, even after all these years,” Daena answered. “I was rooming with her, when I came to the city to be an aeronaut...”

“Natalie! Always Natalie! She always sends people asking for me to come back, and I don’t want it, I have passed that, I have passed her, I don’t have enough time to be mired into the past...” She shivered in her weakness, and her eyes flashed. “You, my lovely Violet Princess, came here to be an aeronaut...? To fly?”

“To fly,” Daena repeated.

“There’s something of the air in you and fire, it makes sense, I...” Renée closed her eyes for a moment. “I’m not going to throw you out like the others. You’ll want to eat. Take the key from the table, go outside, bring something back from a shop.” Her lips flashed into a smile. “Well, you are a Princess, my Maid only comes through a few times a week, I haven’t a need for a live-in... You can cook, yes?”

“Yes, I can cook,” Daena smiled. Inside, she felt, impulsively, a need to help this woman who was so, so sick, and so wild for her eyes. She would keep the faith with Natalie, and then some. “I’ll get some food, and then... I want to help, Renée.”

“I would take _anything_ from you,” Renée answered in a voice low and seductive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Coomaraswamy was the Anglo-Tamil esotericist who brought eastern thought to the elite of Europe and America in the early 20th century. He would certainly be acquainted with Daena and her mother and aunts from his long residence in London.  
> (2) Isadora Duncan was the absolutely famous dancer of the era who was writing the rules of modern dance and opening schools of dance around Europe. But a Princess is not a dancer, not in that way.   
> (3) Renée Vivien had lived like a spouse with Natalie Clifford Barney, but had grown infuriated at her other lovers. Natalie never stopped trying to get her back... Despite continuing to take many lovers. By this point, Ms. Vivien was in a spiral of ill-health and decadence.   
> (4) Passy is one of the finest neighborhoods of Paris, which grew up around a spring outside the city for the rich, and was annexed to Paris in 1860.


	6. The Blood of the Dragon

**The Blood of the Dragon**

Daena took the keys and wandered out onto the street into the noon sun of September in Paris. There was music playing from down the street, a light violin tune with accompaniment, and her feet caught the rhythm as she walked, only for them to step with a darker timbre than the song. _She does not have long to live, I think._

_You think? It doesn’t require being a blood mage or even having a brain to figure that one out, Daena. She is dying, and fast, too. Faster than she or anyone around her realises._

A dark timbre, indeed. Daena had, over the course of her childhood, repeatedly seen cases where her grandmother’s words in her mind were prophetic, like she had access to another level of knowledge that the living lacked. These things she had always nervously pushed aside, even as she took her grandmother’s lessons, reasoning that if she followed the principles of her adoptive mother’s religion that she would act rightly in all things—even matters of ghosts and magic. _I am a Sikh of the Khalsa._

 _You often thing that when you’re about to convince yourself something is okay,_ her grandmother’s voice answered, sharp and haughty. _Well, in this case, you’re perfectly right. It Is okay, and you Do have the power._

 _Why did she place her trust in me so readily?_ Daena felt overwhelmed by it, unready, and there was by no means a small part of her that just wanted to wander back to Natalie and say that the message had been delivered. But there was another part of reckless courage who badly, insensibly, after a single meeting, wanted to be the knight of this woman.

 _Neuroses of her own, granddaughter,_ Visenya answered simply.

Daena pushed through everything else, seized by an intense need to follow through, feeling it her first test in the world. She went into the shop she found, resolving to get enough food for both of them. There would be need for it soon.

It was rare in Passy for an upper class woman to do her own shopping and she was attended with some stares by the women, mostly maids to the aristocracy or nouveau riche who inhabited the area. Daena was so consumed in thought that she ignored them, going about selecting two baguettes, a few fresh brioche for breakfast the next day, butter, a freshly slaughtered hen, some sausages: chipolata, saucisson, and Boudin, in quantity. She had always grown up with a love of meat bordering on lust, the more heavily cooked, the better. Cheese, Onions, shallots, garlic, a bottle of milk, coffee, green beans, a few other things, some Apollinaris. Stocking for two for even a few days was more work than she thought.

“Monseiur?” She showed the address to the storekeeper. “Can I have the groceries brought around? I am filling a kitchen for a friend who was lately unwell.”

“Oh, of course Mademoiselle.”

Daena paid in Francs, and decided she had gotten enough. _I will be very hungry for the boudin,_ she thought, acknowledging, for the first time, what she was really planning to do. _I will be her knight._

Unencumbered, Daena wandered back out, and stopped for a coffee and table water at a café before returning to Renée Vivien’s apartment. Sitting down, she watched the patterns of clouds in the sky with her head tilted back as the music played, and she waited for her drink.

She took the coffee with thanks to the waiter and looked idly from it to the effervescence of the table water and back, before thinking about the Turkish lessons that one could read fortunes from the shape of the grinds in the bottom of a cup. Hesitantly she picked it up and drank, looking back to the clouds above. They were _her’s,_ she was a Stormsinger like her grandmother, one of the last Valyrian Priestesses of the old Gods with names like Meraxes and Vhagar—with names like the names of their dragons. The sky was the natural domain of fire, even as fire rose to meet it.

Sorcery was generally condemned by Sikhs. But she had had this conversation with her grandmother on many occasions. Her grandmother was real, and magic was clearly real, or else her mother could not have taken her here. The Guru Nanak’s encounter with the Queen of Black Magic was a long told story to children, and Daena remembered that line: ‘Listen, you have used your powers for mischief’. By extension, she held herself in the firm belief, she _had to,_ that if she did _not_ use her powers for mischief, but for righteousness and service to others, they were _not wrong._

Finishing her coffee and water, she made her way back to Renée’s apartment. She had practiced. She had never _used_ her magic, used it on another living person. She had never had the need, and had not dared act wrongly with it. Now, though, as she collected the groceries which had already arrived and brought them in, she prepared to do just that.

“You brought too many groceries, my Violet Princess. You will just have to throw some out.”

“You will eat with me tomorrow, M’lady,” Daena looked up, and forced a smile at Renée’s wasted appearance.

“Hardly.” The woman shook her head. “I’ve enough of that.”

Daena felt a flush. “Well, we’ll see... Renée, may I call you Renée?”

“You may... Would you have me call you Daena?”

“I would. I am proud of my name, and I will never have it far from me,” Daena answered, settling out the groceries. “Some Apollinaris?”

“Oh I...” Renée smiled and shooked her head. “You are irrepressible, Daena. Yes, I’ll drink some water for you.” A mischevious grin split her lips. “If that’s all you care to have me do.”

“It is,” Daena laughed, and a flash of an easy smile reached her own lips, that had been deterred by Renée’s terrible countenance and health. She opened one of the bottles and poured it in half measures to each of them, leaning against the counter, her hat off.

Renée looked at her for a while. She focused in on her hair. “Princess of Violet, Lady of Silver,” she said after a moment. “That hair is _glorious,_ and gloriously long too.”

“I can’t cut it,” Daena answered after a moment, smiling wryly.

“You _can’t cut it?_ Are you my Lady Samson, too? Muses and Gods, my dear, I haven’t even finished my _first_ poem about you.”

 _She’s already writing a poem about me..._ Daena’s cheeks colored. “Hardly Lady Samson. I am a Sikh, as my Mother Catherine before me, and my grandfather Duleep Singh and my great-grandfather Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab. It is one of the five outward symbols of a member of the Khalsa, the initiates of the Army of the Saint-Soldiers. And I _am_ a Khalsa Sikh and proud of that.”

“A Sikh Princess, who comes to me in such pride and confidence. You speak like you have more than one mother, Daena.”

“I was adopted, and I do remember the mother of my birth... And I have two adopted mothers,” Daena confessed in a faint heat. “My mother... Is as she was married to Miss Lina Schaeffer. I grew up with them first in England, and then in Germany, and my education was at the Royal Saxon Polytechnic. I’m an engineer, you know.”

“You are the _daughter of two women_?” She looked down, shaking her head. “I wish I had a daughter,” she finally admitted, pensively. “And a woman who would be truly faithful to me like that, to be my wife. Your mother is smiled upon by Fortune.”

“That’s one way to look at it. Another is that as deposed Royalty, we are the exact opposite of smiled upon by Fortune,” Daena answered, feeling the bubbles from water brush again the small, fine hairs of her lip.

“I doubt she would have married another woman if she were still living in her father’s Punjab,” Renée answered with a shrug. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if there were a Queendom for women as...” She looked sharply, nervously, at Daena. “Us?”

“I suppose it would be glorious to live in the domains of the Amazons,” Daena admitted with a smile. “But I came to Paris to fly, as I said.”

“I came to Paris to die. Perhaps we’ll both be successful. _Engineer._ Do you do anything beautiful, Daena?”

“I dance with swords, and I play the sitar,” Daena answered, “and they say I have a good singing voice.”

“Sing something for me!” Renée laughed, then. “You must, you must, Princess of many talents.”

Daena’s eyes flashed. “Let’s go back to your bedroom, and I’ll sing you a finer song than you have heard before.”

“You’re a gloriously forward woman,” Renée actually managed a hair of a blush from pallid, shock-white skin, and uneasily put the glass down. “Perhaps a bit much, my Princess.”

“Not that. I aim to make you hungry tomorrow, like I promised.” Daena stepped forward, and deciding, as the Christian story went, that if she were to grip the nettle, she would grip the nettle tightly, she took Renée’s wrists in her hands and pulled her back. “Come on.”

“A _song_ will do that?”

“Not the song. The blood will do that,” Daena answered, and pressed Renée down into her bed.

The woman gasped as she saw Daena draw out the dagger. It was curved at the end, and the blade was of the blackest steel anyone could have see, a queer sheen that was not at all the same of black, cold cast iron, this was true steel. The hilt was bone, and it curved to a point, a hook which could be lethal in its own right. _Dragon_ bone, Daena knew.

She sucked in her breath as the evening sun flooded around them in the windows and the sounds of a living Paris carried on around them oblivious to what was about to happen. And then she struck her own wrists, precise cuts, not too deep, and splashed her own beating heart’s blood down onto the sick, gravely sick woman, and called forth life for the blood of a Queen. It was a small draught, but her skill was great, and the woman before her still lived, even if as an emaciated horror of her own beautiful prime, half-mad with delirium.

It was still much easier than calling the dead back to life. Inky shadow roiled where drops splashed across Renée’s face and clothes, and Daena began to sing in High Valyrian. “My vigour will be renewed with the rain flashing from my scales, with the bright sun of dawn—this small thing, this small triumph, a gift of my puissance!”

She danced around Renée’s bed until she collapsed, feeling the blood throbbing in the other woman, feeling the blood running thin in herself. Dimly, leaned against her bed, she cut and ripped sheets to bind her wrists, and fell closely against the ethereal vision of that angel of Sappho and the Muses, that incredible mad poet who laid splaid out across her bed, unconscious, with a smile of ecstasy struck across her face, and dried blood shot-through her clothes and hair, clinging to her skin.

There was a roar like distant thunder in the sky. A summer rain was coming to Paris.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historically Renée Vivien died 18 November, 1909.


	7. The Princess of Violets

**The Princess of Violets**

Daena felt the storm in her blood, indeed, she felt it more strongly than she ever could before. Even as her blood flowed out, she had felt power ancient and supple rippling within her. It was a heady test of her ability to control and discipline the magic in her blood. Possibilities, written in tomes of High Valyrian, filled and entranced her.

She found the terrible wounds and illness which wrought its damage to Renée before her. She had turned, twisted, manipulated the living flesh to heal, bridging the gap between what the body could not heal, and Daena’s will to heal her, through the magic, transmuting wounds to health. Terrible images from dreadful books beguiled her, of the other parts which a Valyrian Blood Mage had access to in her puissance.

The ability to close her own wounds with rags to heal had nearly eluded her. The force of will required to have that foresight at the end of the trancelike application of her power was clearly something that had to be learned. There were other ways to do it: The sacrifice of animals, and more darkly, of people. But Daena resolutely felt that she could not invoke ritual magic in the sacrifice of animals, and turned her thoughts in horror from the idea of humans. It made her ill to even think about that this was once a known power among her people, and made her think dark thoughts that made her grandmother’s shade cross.

But her own blood, as a voluntary sacrifice to do good. That was another matter, and one that, though it had tried her, she was no longer afraid of. She could tell, through the fading connection it had briefly established, that Renée was healing. It was the next day, and Daena rose from her side. The wounds she had inflicted upon herself had healed with unnatural speed.

A smile rose at the angelic picture of Renée splayed out on her bed, still desperately thin, but now with the evidence of pain gone from her face. _You will see that my promises come true,_ the Valyrian girl, who felt that more than at any other time before in her life, thought as she headed into the kitchen.

She felt desperately hungry for meat and thought to prepare the blood sausage. Fortunately, in a fine apartment like this one, there was a gas ‘sidecar’ with a set of ranges on the side of the coal stove for quick frying of light meals (1), and as she prepared the usual brioche and jams for breakfast, she exhaustedly boiled water for a press and watched the Boudin fry with some shallots. The birds were chirping outside, and drinking Apollinaris from the bottle as she leaned against a cabinet with the china and felt dizzy was the first measure of revivification, the second coming when she finished preparing the press.

A draught of milk into the coffee, guiltily in the German style, made it perfect as she drank, and slowly some notion of strength returned to her. She finished the boudin and carried it in on her plate with the usual brioche with butter and bread... Back to the bedroom, where she set them down, with a cup for Renée.

“Renée, Renée,” she woke her gently. “I have kept my word. I am confident that you will be hungry.”

The woman stirred, and embraced Daena impulsively as she did. “My Knight.” Her eyes glinted with an intelligence and awareness that Daena could not avoid.

“...Or, My Sorceress?” Renée mused. “I saw your blood _smoke._ ”

“We are a hot-blooded breed,” Daena answered with a somewhat false demureness. Leaning close to Renée, she extended the plate to her, and cup, in turn, her eyes bright.

“ _I am hungry,_ ” Renée shook her head, eating ravenously and drinking her coffee with a fresh need for an energy she felt she had been lacking for longer than she could remember. But between bites she looked sharply, knowingly, at Daena. “You are a Power in the Occult, my dear Princess of Violets.” (2)

Daena took a breath. She closed her eyes hard. _Saving others attends me with the danger of being found out._ But she did not give in to fear, she was the blood of the dragon. Instead, she turned to Renée and kissed her. “I am, but it’s for you, Renée. I will be your Princess of Violets. _Your’s._ If you will have me. And if you will keep this a secret.”

It was an impulsive infatuation of the worst sort. Both of them flung themselves into it headfirst, knowing that and hoping it would be more nonetheless. They could see that in their eyes, as Daena finished her breakfast, and even with the coffee, contended herself to curl up at Renée’s bedside. She didn’t think she’d feel well enough to leave the apartment until the ‘morrow, but it was still a warm September and she felt at peace with her decision.

There was a bit of guilt about Natalie, though the memories of her parade of partners had already grown a little frustrating. _Perhaps it can be handled maturely by all of us._

 _I think it’s going to be spectacular,_ Visenya thought with an almost derisive snort of bemusement echoing in her granddaughter’s mind. _Just make sure to get your things._

A sigh. _Yes, Grandmother._

“Is something wrong, my dear?” Renée’s eyes fluttered open again.

“It would be a very long story.”

“I have a long time today,” Renée flashed her eyes.

Daena reached out and gently took her hands. “Let some mysteries be mysteries for me, at least for now.”

Renée sighed. “This will be a new experience,” she continued at last. “I had not thought to ever be with someone quite so practical as an engineer, though I think you the finest of daredevils if you intend to fly, Daena.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Daena answered.

 _On a dragon,_ Visenya chimed in snippishly.

“Perfectly safe,” Daena repeated, “and also just natural and pleasant for me. I feel called to the air, to speed and flight and soaring. I’ve already taken up motoring... And Lord, but I feel drawn to Marinetti’s _Manifesto._ There’s a song in machinery, that’s why I studied engineering. I shant be a bore about it _at all._ ” (3)

“Well. Are you going to take me flying?”

“Of course I shall,” Daena answered automatically, and slowly made herself rise. “We will fly as much as you want. You may even compose poetry in the air if you wish.”

“Wouldn’t that be something.” She shook her head as if she were recovering the functionality to actually imagine poetry, imagine a future, again. Her eyes took in Daena, long and languid, as she again rose. “Where are you going?”

“Just to drink the rest of the Press,” Daena replied idly. “I am somewhat addicted, from my time at the Polytechnic, though I drink _chai_ too, though it’s hard to find it properly here, instead of old English tea.”

“I should imagine, you would have to go into the Algerian slums to find something of that sort. I should think I am so thankful you are not one of them... My Turk would have rather had a man than me,” Renée made to follow for a moment, but then settled back against the pillows.

Daena returned a moment later. “I didn’t know you’d ... Well, I don’t know much at all about your past loves,” she acknowledged. “Though I don’t mind speaking of them. For me, it’s...” She pinked. “Just Natalie.”

“Of _course_ she seduced you.”

“It was very easy,” Daena confessed. “I was overawed with the salon, and _her,_ and the hashish really.” She reached a hand up to twirl some of her hair, nervously. “I hope you don’t hold it against me.”

“Hardly. It’s reassuring that you’re mortal,” Renée teased, instead, and the moment Daena set her cup down on the end-table, pulled her down, giggling at the squeak of a noise the nineteen year old princess made as she fell against the older woman whose life she had saved.

“Still... Dizzy,” Renée admitted a moment later. “I feel weak, gloriously weak, even.”

“I didn’t heal you entire, I just... Used an old art, to nudge some things in the right way, to heal on their own. It will still take time and I insist that you take your ease and spend as long as you want healing. I ask for nothing; you have your own wealth, I know, and I have mine, too. So I shant impose. I’ll see about getting a permanent maid, though. The place could use it.”

“Such a ... I suppose we shall be rather domestic. You will move here, Daena?” Renée asked, but closed her eyes and settled back on the pillows.

“...If that’s what you want, yes.”

“It is. I will understand your magic eventually, my Princess. Don’t think I won’t.”

“I won’t stop you, but you know, I can’t teach it to anyone else.”

“It’s... Inherent in who I am,” Daena admitted, and turned away. “I used blood as more than mere sacrifice. I don’t think anyone else alive could do what I did. And do forgive me for boasting of it.”

“Once I understand it,” Renée answered. “Well, I’ll give you your time. Tell me about who you are trying to learn to fly from?”

“Monseiur Delagrange,” Daena curled in closer, relieved at the change in subject. “I’m just waiting for a letter back. Natalie promised me an introduction in person... But she wanted me to send a message to you as a favour, first.”

“You were to be another of her heralds of Sappho? And you actually got in my door?” Her eyes widened. “I truly must have been entranced from the very first to not notice it.”

 _Or addled by drugs,_ Visenya’s voice echoed. _She is lovely, though, and I saw you reading her poetry. It’s inspired. But she’ll..._

_Shh, Grandmother, I need someone to stay with. I need someone to be here, to come back to from the skies. Let me at least..._

_I can hardly stop you._

_You can just drive me mad!_

“Daena?”

“Well,” Daena smiled down, “I suppose ... It almost seems fated, doesn’t it, my eyes and your poetry?”

Renée reached up and pressed her nose lightly with a grin. “I think I’ve only been saying that since the moment you arrived, my _Engineer._ ”

There was something light and bright in the air, and now the warmth eagerly filled her through the open windows, and a second cup of coffee, which she rose in bed to finish. Daena didn’t want to be anywhere else. Somehow or another, an older woman of wild beauty and a passionate mad intelligence had wanted her from first sight, and Daena had tested and challenged her own skill at the magic of her foremothers in saving her life. It seemed like the most perfect match which could be imagined between any two people alive, and feeling of both comfort and independence it gave her at once suggested how perfect it was to be in love. Dreams of going ‘A Sara- _whack_ ’ vanished before an idle of a pleasant life of flying and loving—until, unbidden, at the corner of her mind, they crept back in to the roar of the pistons, a savage modern music of their own, of the part of her soul who in Renée’s tender Parnassianism (4) couldn’t help but turn back to the Futurist Manifesto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) This was an era of combination stoves which had a mixture of a coal or wood firebox and some ranges and occasional supplement fireboxes supplied by gas.  
> (2) The Occult and any kind of magic practice would be seen as neutrally and insensibly mingled here, and in this social set, accepted with an intense fascination.  
> (3) The Futurist Manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, madly in love with the beauty of speed, the music of engines, the spitting glory of the maxim gun. We have not heard the last of it here.  
> (4) Parnassianism is the school of Art for Art's Sake -- except tempered by Schopenhauer and the vision of art as an expression of divine truth which required detachment, and thus formal perfection. It is a school to which many of Renée Vivien's works belonged.


	8. The Moving Van

**The Moving Van**

Daena returned to 20 Rue Jacob with a bit of trepidation. She had been with Renée for three days. She knew what people would say. Several visitors, probably lovers, had called on Renée and seen her there. She had gone shopping for more clothes in the meanwhile, and showed up in formal, professional wear, dressing down for her class and trying to avoid attention.

But the moving van was waiting outside, the engine cut out and two men waiting for her trunks and things. Daena rang on the entrance to 20 Rue Jacob, and waited a solid five minutes, before Natalie herself came to the door.

“You were staying here, you could have come in.”

“I didn’t think it was appropriate, Natalie.” She reached for her pile of mail at the front and folded it under her coat.

“...Did you sleep with her?” Natalie asked, her voice almost a hiss.

“Absolutely not,” Daena answered with a flustered grimace. “Absolutely not. Not in _that_ way.” They had, after all, shared a bed. “You’ve been my only lover, I swear that to you, Natalie!”

“Then what has happened. I sent you there to carry a message for me, as a favour, Daena, and you stayed for three days, and I’ve heard stories saying that you’ve been practicing the occult with her and she calls you the Princess of Violets to visitors who call on her.”

 _God, did that happen when I was out shopping?_ Daena grimaced. “She does call me the Princess of Violets, and I do have an interest in the occult, but that doesn’t mean I’m her lover. She was going to _die,_ Natalie. She was actively dying, and I had to do something.”

“You’re not a Doctor, Daena!” Natalie’s eyes widened. “Do you really think to claim that you healed her with the Occult?”

“...I asked her not to talk about this!” Daena flushed. “Yes, actually!”

“I hadn’t thought you the Occultist,” Natalie answered, looking flustered, herself, at Daena’s ready confidence and honesty about something most practicing Occultists would cloud with obscurantist cant.

“Be that as it may, I am nursing Renée back to health, so I returned to collect my things. She is still quite weak,” Daena added. “This is most assuredly necessary.”

Natalie pursed her lips and then shrugged. “Be that as it may, I want to see her, Daena.”

“I didn’t say you _couldn’t._ You can call, _of course._ ”

“Then I will follow you right over,” Natalie answered. “Let your hired men get your things, then. I’m going to miss you, especially the Sitar, and the way even grown men would start to respect your engineering knowledge...”

Daena sighed, and grabbed at her own hands. She looked like she was about to break out sweating. “I’m sorry. But I feel an obligation. I have to take care of her, I’ve made the commitment.”

“If you can help her to recover... Even if she does not come back to me, if I see Renée smiling again, I shall count it a great triumph,” Natalie finally answered, and started to softly cry.

Daena had finally lost her composure and was crying too, as she signaled for the movers to start removing the things from her room. She moved the case with her Sitar herself, wiping her eyes repeatedly.

Finally the van set out, and Daena turned to Natalie. “Do you want to follow me? I was going to take the Métro.”

“I’d just as soon find a cab. And I need to make myself up first,” Natalie answered, wiping her own tears again. “Take good care of her, Daena.”

“Merciful Lord, you’re going to be there in a few hours yourself!”

“Still, take care of her. She was destroying herself, Daena. She’d do things with other women... Horrible to herself. She’s really eating again?”

“Yes, she is,” Daena answered firmly, though she did not countenance the idea of giving anymore details to Natalie, or really even to Renée, considering Renée had told her friends far too much already when she was out.

“I’ll see you there, then. Au revoir.”

“Au revoir,” Daena answered, and wandered off down the street. She found a public ‘retiring room’ to freshen up in for a small payment, and then finally descended to the Métro, which settled her mind.

Riding the train through the tunnel, she felt herself drifting back to an idle fantasy. She sat on the Iron Throne, triumphant, having conquered the _geas._ People like her, Valyrians, were bearing guns and arms in columns with fine European uniforms in black and red, and flags and bunting showed the Targaryen ying/yang Triple Dragon. They were saluting her with drawn swords, glimmering under electric lights. She descended, with the ranks snapping salutes and forming up behind her, to find the courtyard of the Red Keep filled with mounted Hussars, who saluted her with cheers. “ _Long Live the Queen!”_

The chiming bells of streetcars debouching people at the top of Aegon’s High Hill before the gates of the Keep brought her head around. Water towers surmounted all three hills, and then, as she looked out to them, with a roar, Balerion the Black Dread hailed his rider: Her.

Before the gates, down in the bottoms where once there had been the horrible squalor of the city, there were now paved roads, tidy ten-storey apartment blocks, fountains, public baths, and the glass train shed and beautiful marble terminal building of a railway, stretching off through the gates to the more distant parts of the Seven Kingdoms.

Her steel-hulled Elswick cruisers (1) in the Blackwater boomed twenty-one gun salutes as she rode down to them in a carriage like the one that she had seen Queen Victoria in when she was little, escorted by her Hussars. There was a Gurdwara in the city, and she had finished breaking the Faith that her Father had fought. Great steel-hulled windjammers arrived and departed constantly under the protection of her cruisers, sailing as far as Asshai to bring the commerce of the world to her doorstep.

The banners of the regiments escorting her were marked with the names of their victories in the final conquest of the Dornish. The people of the city ran out to cheer her carriage. Arriving at the wharves on the blackwater, steam tugs that sailed through canals to the Gods’ Eye and beyond to the Trident hauled barges with their side-wheels churning, and others positioned her Royal Yacht, which looked like the _Shtandart_ of the Romanovs, at the Naval Dockyards for her to come aboard.

And of course, under the city, rumbled the Underground, through tunnels like these.

She awoke to the reality that it was all a mirage, a daydream of her mind, come when slipped into a reverie on the train. The next stop was her’s, and she rose with haste to debouche from the train, make her connection, and carry on back to Passy. The thought of flying Balerion left a pang of bitterness and loss in her heart, and she carried on briskly to deaden it.

Renée had already given her a key. Daena quietly let herself in to find her things neatly piled inside. “Renée?”

“I was feeling well enough to let them in,” she answered airily from the bedroom. “You travel light for a Princess. I was expecting us to be bursting at the seams,” the older woman laughed from within the bedroom.

Daena stepped up to the verge of the room. “Well... You’d be surprised at what’s in all the trunks.” It was true, though, that she only had eight of them, and a valise. “Most of my things are with my mothers, at any rate.”

“Oh, I suppose that _is_ convenient. What’s wrong, Daena?” She looked up from being sprawled out on her bed.

“Natalie is coming to call on you.”

“I don’t want to see her, my Princess. You have given me my life back, you are my muse now. She... Led me astray.”

“I had to promise her, or else she’d scarcely even let me collect my things.”

Renée’s eyes flashed in anger for a moment, but then she sighed. “All right, all right, I’ll bear it, if you’re here.”

“Thank you. Do you want anything from the kitchen? I know I’m not exactly as good as any proper maid...”

“Oh well, I’ll take a jambon-beurre, you know, my dear, you make that perfectly well.”

“Thank you. Coffee?”

“By all means.”

Daena stepped back into the kitchen, finding the baguettes she had purchased the day before, and slicing off heavy hocks of ham from the icebox. She shook her head. In Germany, with its sophisticated chemical engineering, her mothers already had an ammonia refrigerator, and she badly wanted to get one for her apartment with Renée. Quickly enough, though, she had prepared the two sandwiches, heavy with butter and in her case very plump indeed with meat. Cooked ham, cooked any meat, really, was very appealing, though at fine tables she did her level best to avoid the ghastly experience of Steack à l'Americaine (2), which always made her sick.

The sidecar had the water ready for the press shortly enough, and she fished out another bottle of Apollinaris from the icebox, and prepared it at the table, setting out a jar of milk. Renée wandered out a few minutes later and looked at the food almost in wonder. “How do you eat so much without getting stout?”

“Exercise, mostly, I practice at swords and fighting and such,” Daena replied with a smile as she drizzled milk into her coffee. “I could get you that fit, too, you know.”

“Perhaps you could...” The look in her eyes suggested a different sort of exercise. It took a great deal for Daena to not blush, and she failed anyway.

All a bother, since they had barely finished eating when the doorbell rang. Daena got up to get it with absolute certainty of who it was. “Natalie, welcome. Please come in.”

“Thank you, Daena.” She breezed into the apartment with great urgency. “Renée? Renée? Are you ... I have been so worried about you!”

Renée looked quietly up from where she sat at the table. “Why? Why does it matter?”

“Because I _love you,_ Renée, and apparently, all my fears about all I had heard you were doing, about your suicide attempt in England, were completely true, and without Daena...”

“Without Daena I would die? Possibly, but what would the point of life be without the Princess of Violets?”

“The Princess of Violets.” She stopped short. “A foundling of exiled Armenian aristocrats, raised by a half-black half-Hindoo who apes at the wearing of western dresses... I am here, Renée, and I want you back! By all that is lovely, _I want you back_!”

“You’ll apologise about my mother,” Daena said sharply, feeling her muscles stiffen from head to toe. “Now, please.”

Natalie turned her head with a shocked expression. “Come now, I was hardly being impolite about...”

“Now.” Daena’s face had lost all expression, as Renée stared sharply at the two.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

Natalie turned back to Renée, again ignoring the stiff-set Daena. “You love her, don’t you? Or rather, you developed a tremendous _infatuation_ with her?”

“And who’s to say it wasn’t an infatuation between us, Natalie, and still is? You never respected me or gave me faithfulness.”

Natalie’s eyes widened and she gasped. Her face filled with tears. “Oh damnit all. Is that what you’re going to say? You’re besotted with her, and that’s just an infatuation.” She spun to face Daena. “And you’re a viper, when I sent you...”

“When you held an introduction to a flyer over my head!” Daena shouted. “Knowing I wished it more than anything else in the world. Now, Lady Natalie, I haven’t slept with her, it’s perfectly chaste, I swore it at your salon and I’ll swear it here too!”

Natalie shot a look back to Renée. “Is that what you want?”

“No. I _want_ her,” Renée shook her head, crying as well. “I am sorry, but I cannot return to you. You’ll just have a dozen women at the same time as me, and I cannot abide it.” 

Natalie shook her head, sobbing now, and directed a furious gaze at Daena for a moment. Then she spun on heel and stormed out of the apartment.

Daena reached down to pick up the last of her glass of Apollinaris and wandered out to the door to throw the deadbolt before returning to the table. Renée had retreated to her room, still crying.

Feeling hollow and guilty and miserable, Daena slumped at the table. Thanks to the coffee, she manifestly wasn’t going to retire any time soon, so she started to open her mails. There was a letter from her mothers, and another from her Uncle Frederick, and a few from University friends...

...And at the bottom of the pile was one from Monseiur Delagrange. With trembling hands, she opened the letter to find inside, a polite invitation to visit him at the Aerodrome, three days hence. She screamed wild with joy, and forgot all at once about the day’s drama. She was finally going to fly!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) "Elswick" cruisers were protected cruisers built on speculation by British yards as cheap but capable ships for export. Daena is doubtless imagining, as she is an engineer and quite smart, that they were assembled by Armstrong's Elswick yard in kit form, and then sent to the burgeoning Navy of her dreams through the tunnel and her Mother's portal with numbered pieces, and then reassembled on the Blackwater. The largest ship built in that fashion by 1909 was the Russian icebreaking train ferry SS Baikal, operating on the lake of the same name, and completed about a decade before, of about 4,000 tons. This is perfectly the size for a decent Elswick cruiser.  
> (2) Steack à la tartare was called Steack à l'Americaine before the 1920s. One imagines that often, Targaryen seem to share the preferences of their Dragons for cooked meat.


	9. Ad Astra

**Ad Astra**

In the few days after the encounter with Natalie and the move to Renée Vivien’s apartment, Daena had felt herself something of a proper lady. She had played the Sitar every night for Renée to cheer her spirits as she healed, and interviewed maids and hired one, Anneliese Chaput, who didn’t seem perturbed by the two unusual women she would be working for. Daena quickly put her to work, the servant’s quarters in the back of the apartment finally being filled.

This resulted in a rapid expansion in the different kinds of foods which could prepared, since Anneliese had the time to put effort into keeping the coal stove hot and putting together lists and buying ingredients. This gave Daena the time, while Renée was sleeping in or working on her poetry, to explore the museums of Paris. _Les Invalides_ was a particular target of her fascination, and she wandered both the tombs and the _musée de l'armée_ , and saw the place where Dreyfuss had been both degraded and reinstated to the honours. Parisian society could still roughly be divided into the Dreyfussards and anti-Dreyfussards and it reminded Daena that she was a foreigner that she felt, in political sympathies, if she was a Frenchwoman she would have to be an anti-Dreyfussard, but as a practical matter she understood nothing of the vitriol against him and thought his innocence was well-proved. The Jewish Question was vexing _in extremis_ to her, and she thought much of that was due to her adoptive mother’s good influence.

Really, though, the spate of impulsive tourism in Paris was more about simply controlling her own nervous energy than about anything else. The days were counting down to her visit to the Aerodrome, until finally they weren’t counting down anymore.

Daena drank her coffee and ate buttered bread and looked something like she was trembling, as she took her breakfast with Renée across from her.

“You look fit to burst, Daena,” Renée was smiling.

“I think I can barely stand, or I can run a Marathon, but nothing in between,” Daena confessed.

“You need to be leaving soon, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” Daena said, finishing her coffee. “So one way or another...”

Renée pursed her lips. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. I am happy for you, but I am also acutely aware that flying is one of the most wildly dangerous endeavours known to Man.”

“Well,” Daena smiled. “As it happens, my family is meant for it.” She started back to change, and Renée followed her.

She turned back in the room as she disrobed enough to put on the flying outfit she had assembled from the local seamstresses and catalogues.

Renée stared at her, entranced for a while, and shook her head. “Your family is meant for it. That seems a wild statement, my dear Princess.”

“I was born to fly,” Daena repeated, looking demurely to Renée with a trace of a blush.

“And how do you know that?”

“I promise I will tell you sometime,” Daena sheepishly demurred—and stretched out to kiss Renée. “But please have faith in me. I will come back.”

“All... All right.” Renée watched her go with a pensive expression. Flying was very dangerous.

\-------

Visenya thought flying was very dangerous, too: At least, in a rattle-trap concoction of metal, wood, fabric and wire. _You’ll probably break all your bones crashing on a landing, assuming the thing doesn’t simply disintegrate and drop you to the ground._

_Would you really stop me from flying?_

_A Dragon would be much wiser,_ Visenya answered tartly. _If your mother had only gotten you an egg._

_The whole world would be causing problems for me then._

_You could have moved with Catherine to that Kaffiristan you read so much about, and liberated it from the Muhammadans. You would have your own Kingdom then. She would be a fine regent. Or you could go to China and make yourself Empress. I assure you, a full grown dragon would still smash these armies you love, Daena. The only threat would be to **you,** not Balerion or Vhagar._

_I am sorry it couldn’t come to pass, but fly I must,_ Daena answered. _I will be safe. It’s our right to flight as Valyrians, and we will do it better than these men who dare the sky._

She arrived at the aerodrome, taking a taxi out from the last stop on the Métro line. There, Delagrange and Peltier were waiting for her; like Daena, Peltier was wearing boots, a long black skirt, short riding coat, gloves, blouse, scarf and small hat fixed by pins.

“I see you modeled yourself on me, Your Highness,” Therese offered.

“There is nobody else but the first to follow,” Daena offered insouciantly with a little curtsy. “I may be the Princess, but here I am also the student.”

“You have come to fly, then,” Delagrange stepped forward.

Daena removed her gloves and extended her hand, Monseiur Delagrange kissed it. “Most assuredly, Monseiur,” she answered, and then quietly handed him a cheque for five hundred francs. “Should that be sufficient for us to begin? I would not think to detain a sculptor from his work without compensation equal to that I would provide for the art.”

“More than enough to get started, Your Highness.” He tipped his hat respectfully, and then gestured on. “How much do you know about the machines?”

“I am an engineer...”

“I know, I saw you mention it in your letter. The Royal Saxon Polytechnic.”

“Yes, Monseiur.”

“Well then, describe the machine to me,” he said with a gesture, as they rounded a corner.

Daena stopped and gasped. Her violet eyes widened brightly. There in front of her was a very, very real two-spot Blériot-XI. Then she remembered the words Delagrange had just said and stiffened. “Blériot-XI, two spot model, monoplane in tractor configuration. Box grider fuselage built of ash wood, engine mounted plain with the leading edge of the wing, steel cable reinforced, wingspan seven metres, all-moving rudder, tailplane below the langerons, cord sprung landing gear suspension, this is one of the new models with the trailing edge elevators instead of leading edge, standard Anzani three-cylinder semi-radial engine at nineteen kilowatts rated power, undercamber wings, and the Wrights’ wing warping for control.” As she spoke, she pointed to each feature and specification of the configuration as she walked steadily in a circle around the machine.

“Very good,” Delagrange looked at her and exchanged a glance with Peltier, and then checked the wind-sock. “Can you start the engine?”

“Of course,” Daena answered automatically. “Shall I?”

“By all means.” Delagrange prepared himself and got into the cockpit, as Daena checked the oil and the spark plugs and switched the ignition supply to on, and then went for the propeller.

 _BE CAREFUL,_ Visenya sharply warned her granddaughter.

There was a devilish grin on Daena’s lips as she kicked over the engine and it started with a cough and a splutter as she leapt back as gracefully as a dancer.

Delagrange flashed her a jaunty salute, and beckoned for her to come around. Daena waved her own to Therese Peltier, and then stepped over to the airplane and got in behind the sculptor. “Now, watch everything I do as closely as you can. I will call out manoeuvres before I execute them, so you can see my motions.”

“Understood!”

He began to taxi down the grass strip and line up with it, showing each of the motions required and Daena fixed on them with eyes locked over his shoulder as he demonstrated the operation of the machine.

It seemed like only a moment, or maybe a million years, before he gave power to the engine, and lurching and then gliding, they were roaring down the grass. Daena forced her eyes to be sharp-straight onto his movements, following them. Visenya’s presence in her mind was almost constricting. _Don’t celebrate, Learn._

Then he pulled back on the stick and with rotation the Blériot-XI swept into the air.

For the first time in her life, Daena Targaryen was flying. They banked around the airfield and rose into the air, and though she was only a passenger, it was the utmost trial of Daena’s not to be giggling wildly like a schoolgirl and focusing on the ground around her, on the trees below, on the air in her face, on the sun above.

It was absolutely spectacular. She followed through the motions of the airplane, sensing, dimly, some way in which Delagrange corrected the aerocraft’s manoeuvres, and in doing so, felt her sense of balance always telling her which way was up, never upset by the movements around her.

She felt in tune with the sky itself, though the machine felt like a point of hollowness.

 _That is the gift of a dragonrider,_ her grandmother’s voice echoed. _But it will never be quite so natural as it is with a Zaldrizes._

Daena resolved to make it as close to perfection as she could. She had reached for the sky; she could never look back. The mechanical music of the three-cylinder Anzani was the roar of her mount. She would _fly,_ on her own right.


	10. The Paris Aerodrome

In fact, the flying came faster than could have been dreamed, and faster than her grandmother would have possibly wanted. After a day up in the air with Delagrange, watching is movements on the controls, she was allowed to taxi the machine on the ground the next day, and he supervised her and drilled her through that.

“Your Highness is a quick learner,” he offered, once again impressed.

“I am motivated to fly,” Daena answered with the enforced modesty-if-not-modesty of her upbringing.

“And fly you will. You’ve demonstrated that you know the controls adequately. Tomorrow we’ll begin with another flight of mine, and then I will let you briefly take off running down the runway, and touch her down again before the end.”

“Understood!” Daena shivered with delight at the moment, and tipped a gay little salute, which made Delagrange laugh.

She returned home in great eagerness, the walk and the trains being almost a distraction as she was focused very much on the flying, reviewing every detail of the procedures and technique in her mind again and again. She didn’t daydream like she normally did when riding the Métro.

When she got home, she found dinner waiting. “Your Highness,” Anneliese offered with a curtsy.

“Thank you, Anneliese,” Daena replied with a bright smile, obviously over the moon. “What are we having for dinner?”

Of course, even in Passy, a small apartment would not match a Manor House of the Aristocracy. Daena had grown up mostly at Elveden Hall, on the largest estate in England. Gold bars from the treasury of the Iron Throne had ransomed it from the auction block when it was put up for sale to cover her adoptive grandfather’s debts. Grand English country breakfasts had been a normal part of her experience until she had moved to the Continent, and adapted accordingly. But for dinner here in Paris, well...

“The salad is cut, and there is Soupe aux Chataignes, and cervelas sausage with remoulade followed by choucroute.” The hot bread on the table went without speaking. “I have your Apollinaris chilled as well, Your Highness.”

“Thank you.” A pause. “Renée?”

“Mademoiselle Vivien is taking dinner in her bed today, Your Highness.”

“Oh..” Daena sighed. Renée was still not well, though at least she was _eating,_ which was the critical thing. “Set out the food for my place at the table then, Anneliese, and I will return in a minute.”

“Of course, Your Highness!”

Daena walked back to the bedroom. “Renée, they say I will be ready to fly tomorrow for the first time, a short hop along the runway.”

Renée looked up from the bed-desk that she was using to write. “So soon?”

“Such is flying. There is no other way to teach. And everyone admits I’m a natural,” Daena added with pride.

“Then I’ll trust that your wings will be steadier than those of Icarus,” Renée acknowledged, and a grand smile touched her lips. She was still frail.

“You’ve kept your appetite, at least,” Daena offered with a smile of her own, and stepped closer to the bed. She paused, and then leaned down, and embraced Renée, burying her face against her head and smelling the perfume in her hair.

“I have. I am feeling ravenous.” She rubbed her head up against Daena. “I am writing again.”

“I will read it when you want me to,” Daena replied, and nervously kissed Renée’s forehead. In this gentler relationship, Renée blushed, and it made Daena smile. “I am going to my toilet to change for dinner and I will see you this evening.”

“Of course.”

Daena stepped out, and changed into a relaxed dress, since she wasn’t entertaining, and alone at table. Fall was coming, now, but the weather was still good for flying. The evening news had been pressed for her by Anneliese and she read it as the food was brought out. The foreign cables said a great typhoon had struck Hong Kong with thousands dead.

 _All of this technology, and dooms still come over cities,_ she wondered as she ate.

 _So it ever is. Valyria could accomplish things which even these men do not yet dare, however their artifice in other areas, Daena,_ Visenya insisted.

 _You are right,_ Daena accepted simply. She didn’t doubt it, she had healed Renée, anything was possible. Her smile brightened at some other news, though: Santos-Dumont had completed two cross country flights in his Demoiselle and intended to exhibit it at the Paris Aéro Salon in October, with a planned regular production run of one hundred machines. It was to be the first mass produced aerocraft, and that immediately had Daena’s attention.

_I must get a look at that machine._

_A very close look... I worry enough for us in the Blériot._

Daena finished dinner and sighed. For her, flying was all a marvel, but her grandmother very much liked to regularly remind her that such was not the case for her. In Visenya’s eyes, flying meant Vhagar.

 _I will take the sky in whatever I can make safe, and I will use my own head to be sure of its safety,_ Daena answered, and rose. “Thank you, Anneliese. You can clean up now.”

“Of course, Your Highness!”

Daena stepped back to the bedroom, where Renée had drifted off to sleep after eating. She leaned against the wall and looked at her for a long time. _I’ll keep you safe, Renée._

\-------

The next morning, Daena made the journey back to the Aerodrome. Delagrange watched her systematically check the Blériot she was to fly in, and Daena, with the voice of her grandmother refusing to be silent in the back of her mind, she was absolutely meticulous. Oil and fuel levels, spark test on the engine, movement of each and every part, though of course it was hard to demonstrate the wing-warping cables on the ground, she nonetheless showed it to Delagrange’s satisfaction, showing the rudder and all the other planes moving, and then swinging around to the front to be ready to start the engine.

He gave the second, and on the second attempt at the propeller, she had it going, and Delagrange took his time getting it up to temperature and running steadily. Then she got in behind him.

“You will execute this flight exactly as I demonstrate,” he instructed crisply. This was not the high elegance of a famous sculptor but the professionalism of a man who had become a serious pilot. “You will fly two hundred meters down the strip and then land again, taxi about, and return. If the wind is not good for a return flight, you must taxi the whole way back. After the first cycle, I will comment on your performance, and you will do it again.”

“Understood, Monseiur.” Daena felt shot-through with tension as they rolled out and then began to accelerate, bouncing down the runway. Delagrange took off from the grass with smooth confidence, and holding the machine level and straight a few meters off the ground, flew for approximately two hundred metres. It was shorter than their other flights had been and less glamorous, but it was just a demonstrate. After the return flight, it would be her turn.

And, in fact, after they flew back down the runway and landed once more, Delagrange cut the engine, and then rose and dismounted from the machine down to the ground. “She’s your’s, Your Highness.”

This time, it was on Daena’s command that Delagrange started the engine. “Contact!” The engine sputtered to life, nice and warm from the first run. She flashed him a jaunty salute and then pulled her goggles into position.

He stepped clear and gave her the signal that she was clear, and Daena started to taxi out, with her own hands on the controls. She had practiced taxiing extensively the day before, and now she lined up the machine in exactly the same way to point down the runway, making a last check at the windsock.

She felt something flare and boil in her blood, an intense pleasure that she clamped down with the bleary mind of an engineer. She flashed a last look at the longerons and stringers. There were very few instruments. She made a final adjustment to the mixture control knob and felt the engine power surge and flare, turning over with fire alone, the intensity of explosions contained by metal, governed by the rigid logic of the science she had learned at the Royal Saxon Polytechnic, an alchemy of numbers and materials which made flight as possible as the magic of a Dragon.

Daena eased the throttle open, and the machine rumbled down the runway, faster now, and faster across the grass as she brought the throttle to full open and firmly set both hands on the controls.

Sweeping down the runway, she could feel her grandmother’s memories of Vhagar bleeding in, and that power beneath her. She did not have Vhagar, but she had the Anzani three-cylinder, and with a light touch on the column, she achieved rotation and the Blériot-XI ... Floated into the air, under a gentle and deft hand.

_GRANDMOTHER, I AM FLYING!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As scary as it might sound to us today, in 1909-1910 it was common enough to be earning a pilot's license in a week of training; there were no dual-control machines, so after initial taxiing tests and demonstration flights, you learned by doing.


	11. l'Aéronat

**l'Aéronat**

When she had finished her flying lessons for the day, Daena could scarcely believe it. She had flown back and forth down the airstrip six round-trips, and demonstrated her skill at controlling the aerocraft. Delagrange seemed almost beside himself with how much of a natural she was at the controls; each act had been flawless, and she had centred herself and as she flew, held the machine steady under her gloved hands.

The next day, then, she would get to _turn_ the Blériot-XI, a full circle around the airfield. She was buoyant, her hat at a jaunty angle and a swing to her hips in her crisp step, a little too fast for a typical Parisian woman, though; she was driven by a Purpose. Hastening along with a little swagger of confidence, she felt too excited to return home to Passy immediately, and instead found herself carried long to _Les Invalides._

Before it closed, Daena brought herself to stand before Napoléon. She was hardly the only person to think of it in a moment of triumph, but she had, in her own heart, far more motivation than many others. _Will I ever match you? Will it be on this world or on the world of my ancestresses? Will I have heirs or will my people merely hold my memory, or will I be hated? What advice would you have for me?_

Of course, there was silence. The only ghost who spoke to her was Visenya, and Visenya had her own answers. _He was a monumental fool who lost all that he could have created for his family by not knowing when to stop. For his country, too: Paris could rule the Rhine and Italy alike today without him. Be_ wiser _than that, Daena. Make friends, not enemies, and make yourself loved, and perhaps an opportunity will come. And never be as grandiose as Napoléon: A Kingdom is enough for my granddaughter, and heirs._

 ** _Grandmother,_** Daena sighed. The matters of heirs was starting to come up often from the ghost in her head, now that she was a young adult. Daena knew quite well that she would need a man in her life, but he would have to be fit for a scion of the Targario Lentrot, and that was that. To her, the only way to be taken seriously in an equal marriage was to hold a Kingdom, and unfortunately she was fifty years too late into this world for that to be an easy endeavour.

She made a polite bow to Napoléon’s tomb, and headed back to Passy. The banal thoughts of marriage and responsibility were quickly abandoned, as her heart brightened at the idea of spending time with Renée again, instead.

When she returned to the apartment she shared with Renée, Daena could see that she was still awake.

“You flew, didn’t you?” Renée asked.

“I did. Six round-trips on the airstrip. Tomorrow I will practice circling it.”

“Gods, be kind...” Renée murmured, excited and worried all at once. “You are going to be among the first cohort of woman aeronauts. I want to come and be inspired by you, but the cold is gathering on...”

“When I finish my training, at the end of the week,” Daena said, finishing taking off her outer layers and stepping over to the table to embrace Renée, standing while she sat. “It should still be warm, but it’s true, fall’s coming on.”

“I worry about it,” Renée sank into Daena’s arms against the back of the chair.

“You are still very thin... We should go somewhere for winter, Renée.”

“Really, you’d do that with me?” She canted her head back to look up, with a positively dazzling smile.

“I would! How about Algiers?”

“I don’t much like Mohammedans,” Renée answered, and stopped. “I, well, I had someone... She abandoned me.” (1)

“ _Oh._ ” _Must you really take it out on the whole people?_ “Well, you know, Sikhs and Mohammedans do not get along much either,” Daena offered instead, feeling a bit guilty of it. While true, many great loyalists of the Punjab had followed Islam and nonetheless served Ranjit Singh faithfully (2).

“We had an affair; she was very traditional and wouldn’t leave her _haram,_ she was a wife of an Ottoman Ambassador you know; but I was allowed in as a woman. I wanted her to escape and be with me as my wife, but she followed her husband instead to St. Petersburg, and abandoned me. Never. _Never_ abandon me, Daena, promise it.”

“I will never abandon you, on my honour,” Daena answered, holding Renée tightly as the woman clung to her.

And then Renée, with a surprising strength, pulled down Daena to her lips, and kissed her fervently and passionately. In that moment, it left Daena wishing for nothing else, save a lover’s tongue and lips. She braced herself on the chair and indulged passionately from a woman who seemed to embody an absolutely boundless passion of her own.

\-----------

Despite everything, they had not been intimate. Daena felt a flash of pride at the self-restraint, but it had come as much from Renée’s exhaustion as anything else.

Four days later, she was in the cockpit of the Blériot-XI, preparing to give the signal for Delagrange to start the engine.

Renée had come, and was sitting with Peltier, the two women speaking animatedly. With Peltier being a sculptor herself, Renée found her interesting and the two had certainly served to distract each other for a while, as Renée sometimes put a pen to paper.

Daena took a last glance over to her, and waved jauntily. The bright wave in return made her smile, and the Valyrian made a last check of her instruments, and then flashed a thumb and tipped a salute to Delagrange. “ _CONTACT_!”

On the third try, the engine burst to life and she began to adjust the mix until it was purring with a deep, overwhelming rumble in her ears. Delagrange made a last inspection and flashed his confirmation to her and permission to get underway.

Daena eased the throttle out and the machine taxied into position on the airstrip. There had been some other activity on the day, and a fair number of men were out to watch her. They knew she was only the third woman to fly, and it did attract interest, but at Daena’s behest, Delagrange had avoided alerting the papers so that there was not a great crowd.

Renée, though, had a small camera, and snapped the moment for posterity, before excitedly turning back to whatever poem it had inspired. Daena’s eyes flashed her way, but only for a heartbeat. The intensity of her grandmother’s demand to remain focused and professional and the endless reprise of the demands of her training echoed in her heart.

Lined up on the airstrip, she brought the throttle full open and made a final adjustment on the mix as now the machine was rolling down the grass. Easing into the air a moment after rotation, she hung over the runway, building airspeed and working to shake the machine loose from the stickiness near the ground, the effect whose presence was still debated (3).

Climbing before the end of the clear fields beyond the runway, she brought the machine up to maximum speed, and began a climbing turn to the right. The arc circled her lazily around the airfield. She could see Renée and Therese Peltier following her, Delagrange in animated conversation with his friends, and the other machines waiting their turns, or for another day when their owners or fliers had the time to visit them.

For a moment, Daena fancied that they were dragoons, roosting and wondering when their fliers would return. It brought a flicker of a smile to her, as her eyes looked up to the brilliance of the horizon, blue, white clouds, Paris all around, the smoke rising from steam trains on the southern-central main lines from the Gare d’Austerlitz.

This was her check-out flight, and she continued to rise into the air, until finally, and delicately—she could feel the creak in the machine as she did it, a trembling, faint sense within her that she was pushing limits—she very gently brought the Blériot around and formed a figure-eight in the sky, now in a left climbing turn as she continued to ascend.

At about a thousand feet, she finally levelled off, and swung the machine around to the south. Choosing the La Rochelle Main Line, Daena settled in high over a freight train picking up speed to the south, and gradually overhauled it. The experience was magnificent.

Regularly checking her watch, she found that she had exhausted her twenty minutes in the air much too soon. Turning back to the north, she broke off from the train, and banked lazily toward the runway, the stick vibrating with the power of the Anzani three-cylinder in her gloved hands as she watched the wings delicately warp to bring her about.

Daena took her time lining up on the runway, her mind a thrill of sensed angles and gyrations, her balance holding her firm to the horizon. It was like only half of a partnership, but in the thrum of metal and fire in the engine, she felt distantly what the other half might have been. Then she cut power, and smartly slotted the machine on to the field with a jostle, but nothing dramatic.

Rolling out, she overshot her parking position for the want of brakes, but Delagrange lunged up to the wing and used his weight to help finish slowing the machine to a stop. It was only then that Daena started laughing.

Renée came running, with Therese at her side. As the young aeronaut dropped to the ground, the poet threw her arms around her Princess of Violets and kissed her fervently. In public.

 _That...!_ Visenya exclaimed with a fume of frustration in her mind, knowing well the repercussions to Daena’s public reputation.

At the moment, Daena very much did not give one whit of her grandmother’s ire. She was an Aeronaut, and could fly her own planes. The sky was _her’s._

The warmth on her lips reminded her that so was Renée Vivien.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Kérimé Turkhan Pasha.  
> (2) Sikhs were a minority in their own Empire, and many Hindus and Muslims, and even Christians, served the cause of the Lion of the Punjab.  
> (3) This is of course what we know as Ground Effect.


	12. Kanchenjunga

** K anchenjunga **

Scandal, Daena learned, was both terrible and glorious. Glorious in that suddenly everyone seemed to recognise you, terrible in that it seemed most of them didn’t really _want_ to. It had been embarrassing in the extreme, and subsequently she hadn’t been able to follow up with Peltier or Delagrange. And Passy had grown quite uncomfortable to go out walking down the street in.

Despite all of that, she was irrepressible. She had _flown._ So she distracted herself by going to the kinds of salons where nobody was bothered by the fact that Renée Vivien had shoved her tongue into your mouth in public at an aerodrome. That defiantly celebratory mood managed to last despite everything for the next few days, and it crashed only when she was attending one of those very same salons at another house in Passy. She had been smoking hashish and talking at length about her flying when she felt a presence in the room near her, something foreboding and exciting all at once.

It was a man, in his thirties, with an intense face and prominent nose, somewhere between peasant bulldog and aristocratic hauteur, but not evidencing the slightest sign of bourgeoisie affectations. He was looking at her, too, and his dark and beady eyes bored into her.

“Who is that man?” she whispered in the distracted haze of the drug she’d indulged in.

“Aleister Crowley,” the woman beside her giggled. “The Spiritist… You did not know?”

“...The man who tried to summit Kanchenjunga?” Daena repeated dully. She had had different interests, dismissing the spiritism of western occultists. Her own… Was rather more sure.

In the meantime, he had gotten up and advanced to her like a tiger. There was a stiffening in her sinews. A Dragon did not take well to being stalked, but she felt like she were being stalked. A flash of a smile to her companion and she rose from the settee and smiled as grandly and coldly as she could. “Monsieur, I don’t believe that we’ve been introduced yet.” Her mind was heavy and slow with hashish and a part of her numbly feared that her presentation was not as great as what she held in her mind. 

“I am Aleister Crowley,” he said smoothly, expecting that his name required no further introduction.

That much, at least, was true. “A pleasure to meet you, Sir.” She forced a slight curtsy. “I have read of your expedition to Kanchenjunga.”

“But not my other work?” He seemed bemused for a moment, and then intense. “That is all you know about the name of Aleister Crowley?” 

“I’m very _interested_ in Kanchenjunga,” Daena answered pleasantly. Before she could say more, however, she felt herself being pulled along by Aleister, who had slipped an arm under her’s and taken her off toward a quieter part of the large library which served as the centre for the salon. She stiffened as her grandmother’s ghostly voice howled to her: _Damn your drugs, Daena, he means ill-intent!_

Daena grimaced at what that could mean, as she found herself pushed to a wall like Aleister was embracing her and kissing her, his head tossed up against her, and indeed, he stole a kiss, perhaps out of idle curiosity. The helplessness was terrifying and grating, and brought her blood to a furious boil.

“You’ve a fever,” he remarked, his eyes now alight with bemusement at his knowledge and his confidence which contrasted with Daena’s having been put in a position of subjection to him. “Why don’t you _heal_ yourself, Blood Witch?”

All at once, Daena knew what he really wanted.  _Damn it all, Renée, why did you go around gossiping?_ She fumed through the haze. 

“I don’t have a fever, it’s perfectly normal for me,” Daena answered automatically, though she cursed herself for it a moment later. 

“I didn’t know Armenians were so hot-blooded.” He reached a hand up and brushed it across her cheek. 

“Be that as it may.” Daena swiped the hand away, only to have him grip her own wrist until the pain shot in stabbing lances down her arm. A grimace twisted into her face. “ _You hurt me, Sir.”_

“Tell me how you saved Renée Vivien,” he said sharply. “That was a working as no other working.” 

“You mean it was real?” She challenged, defiantly. 

He slapped her across the cheek and then leaned in to whisper across where her flesh stung. “My sex magic is most eminently real, my darling Princess, if you’d like me to demonstrate… Tell me how you did it, and you may rule at my side in the Order I have created.” 

She lashed out and bit his cheek as he nestled in close to her. The blood dripped across her mouth, and she could taste it was ill, shot through with incipient disease, by the powers she had leaned. She spat it and whispered in Valyrian. As she did, there was a thunderous roar of distant thunder, and a few made mention of a thunderstorm coming so far into fall in surprise, and perhaps a bit of subtle, gnawing consternation as the air changed. 

The power in the blood she had taken was slight, but she turned it at once to clearing her head from the influence of the drugs, and as decisiveness and certainty returned to her, she drove her knee sharply against Crowley and made him stagger back, then pushed him into the wall in turn, as his eyes widened in blank consternation, in fear, in  _lust,_ in lust most of all, at her, at her power, as she glared into his eyes. “Leave,” she hissed, “or else my  _Blood Magic_ should be the end of you, Crowley.” 

“Blood magic,” he murmured, as if in a trance. He pressed himself close to Daena again, his hands groping against her breasts, and lower still, as if in the grips of a mad passion to have her, to have her _magic._

Then, in the dim of the hallway they were in, the chatter of a soirée behind them, of people innocent of the drama happening around them, a knife appeared. It was the  _kirpan_ of Ranjit Singh, the Lion of the Punjab himself. Princess Catherine had given it to Daena, and unlike a strictly ceremonial  _kirpan,_ it was a serious blade for a great warrior King, his small-dagger of last recourse. 

Now it was directed at Crowley’s neck. “Leave, Sir,” she repeated. “Give up magic. Go climb mountains.” 

He stared at her. There was a stirring behind them. 

“Daena? Are you back there with Aleister...?” 

“Now,” her voice dropped into a growl. 

He spun on heel and retreated back down the hallway in the opposite direction. 

Daena turned toward the figure there. “Absolutely not. He went home for the evening I believe.” 

“Crowley? Really! He should be here until all hours, if his reputation is right. But they were saying that … He had come to see you.” 

“And that wasn’t something you saw fit to tell me?” 

“You didn’t know him before, really!? I...” 

Daena fumed. “No I didn’t,” she said, her  _kirpan_ back in the sheath, as she moved with nervous energy over to the heavily alcoholic punch. “Now let me try some of this.” 

“I thought you didn’t drink.” 

“I thought I didn’t either,” Daena answered, still trembling, but took a massive glass. It tasted altogether too good, and before long, and another trip, or maybe another two, her nerves were calm, and she was also a shivering, almost blacked out drunk. 

It was almost two hours later that Renée actually left her apartment to come get Daena, the  Princess having been so drunk  that the hostess of the salon had phoned her and requested some kind of help; Renée had arranged with their servant a cab, and come straightaway, to find herself shocked at Daena’s condition. 

Renée took her right back to their shared apartment, where Daena spent most of the night vomiting, and most of the next day and night sleeping in a confused disordered state. After that, Renée gave her aspirin, and their servant prepared a classic French breakfast for her. 

Daena was gazing into the coffee drenched with milk. She was eating in bed, the bread and the jam was a lavish experience by that standard, and a slice of cheese as well. Her head no longer hurt, and she looked to Renée with the appreciation of a drowning woman. 

“So what happened?” Renée finally asked, then and only then. 

“Aleister Crowley,” Daena grimaced. 

Renée Vivien stared. “Did he rape you?” 

“ _No,”_ Daena answered. 

“Good, I didn’t think he was the type...” Renée sighed. “What happened, my Princess, that you tried to make yourself a sot in a single night?” 

“He accosted me and he did molest me, but it was really incidental to his lust about something else. My magic, Renée. Healing _you.”_

The other woman blushed sharply, and cringed. “Fickle, are the swift-footed fates!” 

“You could have possibly not kissed me in public and let all of Paris know that we were a couple… Which hasn’t even consummated our relationship yet,” she added, taking another swig of her coffee after watching some of the crumbs from the bread slowly disappear into it, “not like all of Paris would believe that.” 

“I am sorry, _Gods,_ I am sorry, Daena, I didn’t mean...” Renée dropped to her knees. “Is there … Please don’t leave me, my Princess!” 

Daena shook her head and laughed, bitterly. “If you think I’d leave, you haven’t the faintest idea of my mettle. Leave, leave… I’d not leave you.” Her eyes flashed. “But leaving sounds like an excellent idea.”  She paused, and flushed. “ _Not leaving you. Leaving Paris._ Getting out of the scandal until they find something else to make a scandal of.” 

“Oh.” Renée calmed a little, and leaned in to kiss Daena, who accepted it. “I owe you for having wronged you, my Princess, and being so resolute.” 

“I need to get away from Crowley, and Paris, and _you_ need to go somewhere warmer, anyway, Renée, to keep healing,” Daena said decisively. “I’m going to buy my Demoiselle and we’ll assemble it where we’re going.” 

“Where are we going?”

“I’m a dragon,” Daena said decisively, “and we need someplace warm. Aetna. We’ll go to Mt. Aetna.” 

“Catania then?” Renée’s eyes widened with immediate delight.

“Yes, we’ll find a villa outside of Catania, and spend the winter there, and be country Italians, and I’ll be the first person to fly around Sicily and I’ll see Aetna from the air and you’ll get better in the warm sun, and _It. Will. Be. Lovely._ Mine?” 

She looked fetchingly eager to Renée as the idea seized her, and the woman couldn’t resist another kiss. “When shall we leave?”

“The sooner the better. I have no taste for scandal hurting my family, let’s start packing, and we’ll send Anneliese to a travel agency to buy us tickets all the way through the boat train to Sicily. We’ll get a hotel, and by the time our things arrive, we’ll have a villa.” 

“No preparation at _all?”_

“If I see Crowley one more time, I’d do something that would send me to Guiana,” Daena answered intemperately. “We’ll leave as soon as we can.” 


	13. Italia

As promised, Daena didn’t wait long at all. The next day, she went to the headquarters of Clément-Bayard, the entrepeneur who was building the Demoiselle No.20 for Santos-Dumant. A last minute telephone message had managed to get her a promise of an appointment with Monsieur Santos-Dumant himself, while Anneliese was sent to buy the tickets for the journey and then came back to help Renée pack, which Daena well knew meant that she would have to do it all herself; Renée wouldn’t do anything at all. Daena, of course, would herself not actually do any of the work, but she would at least tell Anneliese where to put what and arrange for the van to take the luggage to the Gare de Lyon. Daena didn’t mind the division of labour, really, she was quick with a sword and loved machinery and feats of daring. Renée had found herself a rather muscular Princess of Violets.

The Clément-Bayard plant was at Trosly-Breuil, outside of Compiègne, which meant that she had taken the crack express from the Gare du Nord that left at dawn toward Brussels; the first stop was at Compiègne, so she arrived in barely more than an hour. A car was waiting for her and she pulled on her driving jacket as she arrived and settled down behind the driver. Arriving at the factory, Daena couldn’t help but be distracted by the sight of a long row of Demoiselles being erected in the works. The doorman was, in a way, too good at his job. She didn’t have nearly enough time to linger and look at the works before she was ushered up to the office that Alberto Santos-Dumant was occupying while Clément-Bayard worked with him on the production of their promised 100 Demoiselles, the first production line for an aerocraft in the whole of the world.

Santos-Dumant was shorter than Daena, but perfectly courtly to her. He rose the moment she arrived, and approached to bow and kiss her hand. “Mademoiselle, please, have a seat. I confess I have already heard of your exploit; I think you are only the fourth woman to fly.” 

_There’s been a lot more than that,_ her grandmother’s voice remarked with trenchant bemusement inside of her head. 

_Oh, that’s hardly fair,_ Daena thought, and accepted the chair with a gracious smile. If anything she was relieved that the details of her being a Princess hadn’t also been plastered all over Paris; then she would never survive Renée’s stunt, socially. “Thank you, Monsieur. The fourth? I admit to keeping track, and I thought I was the third, if I may confess some pride.” 

“In a heavier than air machine, that’s so,” Santos-Dumant agreed. “But Aida de Acosta flew my No.9 some years ago.” 

Daena immediately made the connection to a picture of a woman on Santos-Dumant’s desk, next to a vase of fresh cut flowers. She offered a smile. “I cede the point, Monsieur. Fourth it is.” 

“But you will be the first to build your own aerocraft, will you not?” Santos-Dumant had a winning, charming smile which set even Daena at easy. 

“...To assemble, at least. I would like to buy a Demoiselle, Monsieur, that’s so. Knocked down in kit form with all the parts and shipped with all possible care to Catania, in Sicily. A friend of mine is unwell, and we are travelling to Sicily for the sun and warm sea-breezes.” 

“I am honoured, at any rate, to provide the first machine owned by a woman aeronaut,” Santos-Dumant’s expressive sincerity was charming.

Daena just wanted to go ahead and ask the terms of sale then and there, but Visenya intervened.  _Daena…_

“May I see the production line?” The Targaryen scion asked, instead.

“But of course!” Santos-Dumant seemed all excited at even the suggestion, getting up and going to hold the door for her. 

His absolute willingness was all Daena needed; she rose as well, smiling as she picked up her purse, and followed along with a sense of triumph. She wanted nothing more than to see every detail of the works, after all, from a professional perspective if nothing else. 

He showed her where they were fashioning the bamboo rods into the three longerons that the plane would have. They were 5cm in diameter and linked by steel tubes, which Daena found a little odd, since it would seem steel tube longerons would also make sense (wasn’t bamboo just a wooden tube?), but she was surprised by the great strength. There were brass socket fittings, and the wing spars were ash and the ribs of bamboo, even in the improved, stronger design of the Clément-Bayard machines. Thin tube radiators were mounted under the wings to handle the heat removal from the engine, a design Daena thought was elegant, though the wings only warped downward. 

Still, the inspection of the assembly line convinced her of the workmanship, and even Visenya seemed a bit won over, grudgingly, by Santos-Dumant’s enthusiastic attention to detail. They returned to his office, and the outcome was foregone. “ How shall you fit her, Mademoiselle?” 

“I will take the Clément-Bayard,” Daena specified the most powerful 4-cylinder engine. “I intend to circumnavigate and fly over Mount Aetna while I am in Sicily, so I need the horsepower.” 

“I shall look forward to reading about it in the papers. We can draw the purchase agreement up immediately? It shall be fifteen thousand francs.” 

“Of course.” Daena’s lilac eyes _shined,_ she didn’t even blink about the money. 

\-----------------------------------------------------

The next  afternoon , they  arrived at the Gare de Lyon.  A s expected, Daena had handled all of the packing with Anneliese, and now Renée and Daena waited in the First Class Ladies Sitting Room in the Gare de Lyon as Anneliese returned, having finished arranging their tickets. 

“Your Highness, I apologise,” Anneliese began, “but we got a wire back from the Rome ticket office, and the first time there is was an open first class drawing room on the sleeper from Rome to Siracusa as far as Catania was Thursday, so we will have to spend two nights in Rome.” 

Daena grimaced, a little. “Did you find accommodation?” 

“Oh yes, I booked Your Highness and Mademoiselle into the Grand hotel de la Minerve.” 

Daena grinned. “Mademoiselle Chaput, you are most capable.” She glanced beyond the woman to see they were making the boarding call, and reached over to brush Renée’s shoulder, where she had been writing in a notepad. “Come on, they’re about to make the boarding call.” 

“Always in a hurry.” Renée looked like she was going to give Daena a peck on the cheek, but restrained herself, at least. 

They rose and headed out to the train shed, where the coaches of the Rome Express had been shifted from the Gare du Nord (arriving as a non-stop crack express from Calais) via the Paris Ceinture to the Gare de Lyon, where the sleepers and restaurant cars of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits were waiting at the platform, and the coaches were coupled on ahead, with those passengers who had sleeping accommodation being shown back to their rooms while passengers like Daena and Renée who boarded in Paris were taken directly onboard. 

A s they arrived, Daena leaned over to catch the attention of the Car Attendant. “Excuse me, we have a layover in Rome. Can you get me a paper so that we have some idea of what to do?”

“Of course, Mademoiselle. We have yesterday’s _Il Messaggero,_ brought up on the northbound that just arrived.” 

_ Oh bother. I’m going to have to learn Italian,  _ Daena thought suddenly. She knew French and she knew Latin, so she assumed that this would not be hard. But Renée could see the look on her face, knew exactly what was going through her head, and had to stifle a giggle. 

“Not a word,” Daena held up a hand, though there was a grin on her face when the paper arrived and the drawing room was closed. “Not a word.” 

\----------------------------------

What Renée quickly came to respect was that Daena actually was very good with languages. Being well-versed in Latin and fluent in French, she was quickly applying herself to translating modern Italian newspapers and using the phrase-book that she had bought to herself begin to learn the language, trying it out to surprising success with the customs officers when they came aboard for her and Renée’s passports on the frontier in the Alps the next morning. 

They arrived in Rome late at night, and checked in to the  Grand hotel de la Minerve  and promptly retired. But by that point, the object of Daena’s desire for the next night was already well in hand. She had discovered that d’Annunzio’s play,  _ Il Nave,  _ had returned to theatres in Rome, having had a spectacular run of more than a year  touring from city to city in Italy  because of the great popular sentiment it had enflamed. The moment they arrived, she had asked Anneliese to arrange getting them a Box, so that the next evening they were ensconced at the Teatro Quirino. 

This, of course, was exactly the thing which Renée was fascinated by, and she was drawn in at once by the bombastic, spectacular production and enormously pleased to be at Daena’s side and well enough to take it in. Daena, for her part, was entranced, unspeakably so, fixed in fascination at the great tragedy playing out across the stage.

The story of the play was of the revolt of Venice against Justinian, with the execution of the Eastern Tribune and his sons as a righteous declaration of Venetian independence; but from the Byzantine camp came a seductress against the newly _elected_ Tribune of the city, Marco Gratico. Her name was Basiliola, and since the Tribune had been her father and his sons her brothers, she was perhaps understandably upset with the Venetian people, and conspired against them by seducing Marco and turning them against the Venetians who had destroyed her family, having them thrown naked in to a trench from where, as they railed against her, she shot their leader full of arrows and, growing frenzied with lust at the sight of blood, then she proceeded to kill all the others in the same way.

Unsatisfied with her revenge and with Marco alone, Basiliola then seduced his brother, the Bishop of Venice, in a wild dance in the Cathedral, and turns him against the people of Venice. But Marco comes to his senses, and realises the evil he hath wrote; he kills his own brother to save the people of Venice from him, and turns on Basiliola and imprisons her. To expatiate his own sins, he then volunteers to leave Venice for exile at the command of a great ship, with which he redeem himself and atone for his sins by gaining wealth, glory and land for Venice. Basiliola begs to accompany him, but his stern reply is that the only way that she may is by being nailed to the prow as a figurehead, whereupon she flung herself onto the blaze of an altar in offering for naval victory. As she dies, the ship is launched amid hymns of celebration at the end of Byzantine domination.

When it was finished, the play left Daena with a peculiar, sharp intensity. Renée had loved it, too, but Daena seemed particularly affected by it. She was trembling with intensity as she went back to their hotel room.

On their return, she rang for a bottle of champagne, and had it poured for the two of them, in the sitting room of their suite. Her violet eyes were sharp and quick with thought. “I must meet d’Annunzio.”

“It was a splendid play, but you seem almost, infatuated,” Renée remarked.

“Well, first I need to learn Italian.” Daena looked sharply at Renée for a moment, and then drained her glass in a single convulsive gesture, and rose, to stand before her and reach down to take her hands. She pulled the poet to her feet, and kissed her sharply and intensely, tongues locking together as Renée’s eyes widened, delighted.

“There’s only one infatuation here,” Daena insisted, and tugged Renée toward the bed.


	14. ÆTNA, or The Volcano

**ÆTNA, or The Volcano**

Daena woke up to the intensity of the feelings over the fact that she had just made love to Renée. She had made love with her, passionately, tenderly, and long. She had known the absolute bliss of a lover who cared everything for the moment, and absolutely nothing for her own self—not any part of herself—as Renée did, until Daena was forced to see to the care for her, driven by her own compassionate instincts, which Renée lacked for herself.

It had been glamorous and spectacular, and all in one of the finest hotels in Rome, too. Daena giggled at the last of those scattershot thoughts as it crossed her mind, and rolled over to embrace Renée, a spectacular feeling by any measure. “Was that a worthwhile night in Rome for you, my dear?”

“Mmmmnn. Stop teasing me, you already know the answer.” Renée pressed against her. “Do we have to get up?”

“Not particularly any time soon, the train doesn’t leave until evening, but this _is_ my first time in Rome,” Daena admitted sheepishly. “and I’d like to eat sometime.” Then she pecked a kiss on Renée’s cheek. “Also, you’re rather wonderful.”

“... _rather_?” Renée pulled her in and kissed her far more intensely. “You can eat dinner, my Princess of Violets. I’d rather stay in bed and _make love to you._ There’s months of lost time to make up for.”

Renée was hungry in another sense, recovered enough by the magic Daena had wrought those months before. La Amazone had treated her as just one more lover. Renée Vivien was _completely fixed_ on her.

There was a thrill of shock at that, pleasant shock, of the kind which shot up the spine into the heart, and took Daena’s breath away. This was _love…_

 _Daena,_ Visenya warned sharply, _I won’t stop you, but you must remember that your duty will always be there. You will not escape it in Renée’s arms, and she will still cause problems for you._

Daena ignored her grandmother, kissing Renée passionately and pulling her back in against herself. Rome could wait for another time, they could hardly see anything in one day after all… But they could definitely _feel_ each other in one day, oh yes they could.

“Now that’s the right choice,” Renée almost purred in delight, and kissed Daena in turn. The two entwined in a hazy fog of love and lust, and forgot about anything else at all, for as long as they wished, for as long as they needed.

\----------------------------------------------------------

They had gotten to the train station in time for their departure, at least, having had a dinner of veal cutlet at a casual little shop before reaching the train station. The first class drawing room was reserved for them as promised, and they headed into the evening, and a chance to make up for the want of sleep the night before by letting the rails rock them to sleep.

They had breakfast the next morning with mimosas to accompany it in the restaurant car, wending along the coast of Basilicata. The railways in Calabria were not fast, and the train was slow south of Naples, and the scene of the blue-throat of the Tyrrhenian Sea through their windows was amazing. Daena soaked it in, leaning against Renée’s shoulder. She didn’t really want the train journey to end, except that she could scarcely afford to live in a First Class Drawing Room eating in the restaurant car non-stop for the rest of her life. And it wasn’t quite private enough for what they had done the day before…

Daena was at least marginally smart and patient enough of a person not to have sex in a train compartment. The thought brought a soft smile to her lips, though, and she squeezed Renée’s thigh before they got up to make themselves up for lunch. Fortunately, Sicily was not exactly a great vacation destination for the rich of Europe, at least, enough to guarantee there was someone who recognised Renée Vivien on the train, and so they managed to pass their meals in anonymity.

They arrived at Villa San Giovanni in the late afternoon. There was a marshalling yard in the town which fed into the three v-shaped slips for the rail ferries that went to Messina. The rails were configured so that the rakes of coaches could be brought into the yard directly from Rome without stopping, and then would back onto the ferries, loading via the bow of the ship, with the train being guided by the guard in the van at the tail.

Once they were aboard, the passengers could go up-deck, and Daena eagerly insisted on it. “Come on, come on, Renée, the sea-breeze will be wonderful for you!”

“Anything for you, Daena…”

She needed a little help to keep up as the Valyrian woman almost bounded in her dress up-deck, and eagerly leaned on the railing to breathe in deeply of the salt air. “There, the shore of Messina, of Sicily,” Daena observed cheerfully as they pulled out. “We will be there in less than forty minutes, I think. It’s just enough time to enjoy ourselves.”

“And what would you do for that?”

“We’ll get something in the galley.”

“Are you _trying_ to fatten me up, my Princess?”

“...Well, between the sea air and more food, _yes,_ that’s exactly what you need,” Daena replied, and brightened to see Arancini as the main snack on the menu. “They say they first made this for Frederick the Second, _Stupor Mundi,_ so he could carry along a full meal while hunting,” she explained to Renée. “I read everything I could about Sicily and Ætna when we were first considering coming here. You must have at least one?”

“...At least one,” Renée acknowledged with a pleasant if slightly long-suffering look.

Daena went up and ordered a plate, trying out the Italian she was force-feeding herself to learn as quickly as possible. It was hardly good at the moment, but it brought a smile from the counter, and the informal atmosphere of the galley counter on a short-haul rail ferry contributed to the relaxed, holiday, nautical air. She left Anneliese, who had followed them up a few minutes beyond with a wry air at her employer`s eagerness, to wait for the fried dish and bring it around when it was ready, and returned to the rail to lean on it and smile and make silly faces where no-one could see them, except for her and Renée. Daena was very much in love, and gently coaxing Renée into eating Arancini was well worth it.

The port of Messina was beautiful, and for a while Daena imagined the castles wreathed with the smoke of cannon and flames licking from the sides of wooden ships as it had been in days of old when they had been built with their sloped sides, so unlike the older medieval castles of her childhood, but reminding her somewhat of the angular shapes of her youngest memories—of Dragonstone.

With a contented sigh, she went back below to the warning of the ship`s whistle with their little party all together. They were soon again underway, and two hours later, in the night, they were in the hall of Catania`s Porto Station, while the train continued on to the south for Syracuse.

A telegraph had been sent ahead, of course, and so it was that in Catania, a city of earthquakes and fires and volcanic eruptions to show the power of Ætna, they arrived to find a car waiting. But Daena paused, and instead looked to the northwest. There, she could see, and _feel,_ the looming bulk, and strange entrancing power of the Volcano. A sense of confidence and strength came to her. In the warmth, Renée would heal. In the shadow of Ætna, Daena would fly.

“Come on, Daena, the driver is waiting!“ her lover called out.

Sheepishly, Daena followed her to the car. They were at the hotel minutes later. The Palace Catania, with its Turkish Bath, banquet room, terrace bar and roof garden, was located directly in the heart of the art quarter, and as they checked in and Daena handed over the bank instrument (in Pounds, to gain the best exchange rate), she could tell that Renée was already in love. A part of her had wanted nothing more in the world; tomorrow would dawn, and she already knew that they would be taking the Circumetnea Railway to see the volcano and scout for the perfect village to buy some dilapated old villa in.

It was like Romance personified, like there was nothing else in the world to worry about, like all of her dreams had already come true. But in the back of her head, the last line from d`Annunzio`s poem, she could not quite escape. It echoed, like the beat of a distance drum, and the power of the Volcano seemed to make it later. She could not get rid of that strident declaration, even when, or perhaps especially when, making love with Renée.

_Fit out the Prow and Set Sail for the World!_

_Fit out the Prow and Set Sail for the World!_

_Fit out the Prow and Set Sail for the World!_


	15. Circumetnea

They found a villa in a derelict condition alongside the Circumetnea railway line and bought it. There had been several others which had appealed to Daena, but Visenya had insisted against them because of the risk from the volcano, and on such matters, the young Princess demurred to her grandmother’s whispered voice. This one was just outside of Nunziata, overlooking the railway, and the sea. There was an old semi-abandoned vineyard, and this, Daena quickly hired some local men to work; she wanted her own wine.

The repairs to the villa were also done by locals; Daena wanted to have good relations with them. But, she had them store their tools and their equipment for working the vineyards at their own homes in the village, and kept the barn empty, once it had been repaired. Soon enough the kit for the Demoiselle arrived, with a special train on the Circumetnea having taking it on in Giarre from the Standard Gauge and worked it straight up to the Villa. Through the winter, Daena worked on assembling it, while Renée wrote her poetry. It was an absolutely perfect division of work. In the evening they ate the fruits of the Sicilian countryside and drank wine from the locals whose vineyards had never gone quiet, and made love, and then Renée wrote it down in diary.

It was after more than a month, in late February, that Daena finished work on the machine. It was almost never below freezing in Catania even in February, and Daena managed to obtain an old potbelly stove for the barn, keeping it fuelled with coal—safer, and she would do nothing to risk her Demoiselle.

She ran in, to where both Renée and their maid were at once aware of what it could only be, from the excited blush on her face and the thoughtless way she still arrived with grease on her cheeks—Renée writing at her desk, Mademoiselle Chaput making them _couscous al pesce._ “She’s done! All the tests check out, and the engine turns over. I’ll call the men of the village for a taxi test in the fields tomorrow, to make sure everything is set, and if no adjustments are needed, I’ll take her up the day after.”

Renée rose, Daena’s look of absolute pleasure was infectious. She stepped lightly over, and embraced the younger woman, whose unique features she now knew marked the race of the Valyrians.  They exchanged a kiss; Anneliese politely hid a bemused grin at the affection of the two women, and Daena, feeling it anyway, waved a hand her way. “Mademoiselle, I’m not too excited to forget to eat.”

“Of course, Your Highness!” She turned back to the kitchen. “But the day after tomorrow, Her Highness will be an aeronautrix, and fly over Aetna.”

Renée froze. “Is she right, Daena? You’re going to fly  _over_ Aetna? Not just around?  That sounds incredibly dangerous! ” 

“I need only eleven thousand feet, and Legagneux nearly made that in December,” Daena answered, and tried to reassure her with a kiss. 

“ _Nearly._ ”

D aena sighed. “It’s  _just_ a world altitude record. And I won’t try it on the first day.” 

“We’ll have this conversation again, I promise you,” Renée refused to yield. 

“Fair. May we put it behind us for now? I’ll only circle the mountain on my first flight, if that. Let me feel how the machine feels? You’re not the only one who’s been lecturing me.”

This thing,  Mademoiselle Chaput  should not overhear. Renée at once pulled Daena in against her, and whispered, in the Valyrian that she had begun to learn. “Your Grandmother.”

“Yes.”

“If she doesn’t tell you not to, then I will not tell you not to,” Renée offered, grinning at the alliterations. 

Daena sometimes wondered if Renée really believed her, but she was thankful either way. Her mothers knew, and no-one else, the true story of whence she had come, until Renée. Her lover could be trusted to hang onto every word, in fascination and love for the entire story of her magical Princess of Violets, and even promised that if Daena should find a dragon, then certainly she would dare to ride it with her lover.

Daena didn’t really know what to think about that. But she did know what to think of the warmth of Renée against her, the way she loved her absolutely, as La Amazone had not. And, said same lover needed to  _bloody well eat enough._ One of them was a buff swordswoman, the other… Decidedly not. 

“Come, dinner is all but ready. Let’s sit and break bread, and try another wine…” Sometimes, she regretted violating the prohibitions of her religion, but not that night. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The taxi tests had gone well, but ‘well’ was relative. She’d ended up re-working a few parts of the controls for tautness, and accepted another day’s delay.  Her first flight had been a wonder, and she remembered the tension when it began, the moment she had begun to claim her birthright of the air. This one was considerably  _more_ tension. It was a test of her skill as an engineer and a builder, too. With no adviser, no teacher around, using only the lessons and skills that she had learned in Paris. 

It was very easy to die in the air. 

Now, Daena personally checked all of the connections, the wires, the cables, the magnetos, the contactors. She inspected the fuel in the tank, the oil in the engine, shook the wheels to check the fit with the shocks. Dressed in her jacket and scarf, goggles on her head over a leather helmet, only the skirt marked her sex. 

Finally satisfied with the condition of the machine, she swung herself up into the cockpit, looking down the length of the fields she owned. Daena had paid men to clear the airstrip and remove any kind of debris or rocks from it. It was smooth enough for the job. One brave young peasant lad, who was going to see a plane fly for the first time in his life, approached to do the deed of starting the propeller. 

Inside the cockpit, which was fitted with every optional instrument available, Daena set the starter. “Magnetos to contact.” That was for her own benefit as she turned the last knob. For the peasant resting his muscular, sun-browned arms on the propeller, a simpler instruction and invocation would suffice. “ _A_ _vanti_ _!_ ”

She had been improving her Italian, after all.

He gave a hefty push, and shoved the propeller forward as hard as he could. The engine coughed and spluttered and he lunged backwards, as the blade seemed to hesitate and then she brought up the mix ratio and it roared to life, beginning to warm up, spewing smoke and fumes into the atmosphere.

_Daena, be cautious._

_Yes, Grandmother._ She spent her damned good time warming the engine up. It was 54 on fahrenheit outside, and she really needn’t have, but Daena was serious about caring for the machine, which she had named the  _Aetna I._ The men watching and waiting in the field took to smoking their pipes or cigarettes, or drinking, waiting. It was one of the few kinds of carnivals where the entertainment was upper class.

_What you fly is **far** more frail than a dragon. I would not try to stop you. You are the blood of the dragon. I would fail. But do not think yourself riding a living being, able to compensate for your mistakes. You must be one with the air yourself, Daena. _

The girl-woman tipped a salute to the air.  _ I know.  _ Finally, her leather-gloved hand slipped down to the throttle, and she eased it forward.  Rolling, bouncing down the grass of the airstrip in the villa’s fields, she brought the throttle to full, the increase in speed easing out the bouncing. The wind rushing past already brought her blood to a keen height of anticipation. 

A nd then with one smooth bounce that was followed by perfect gentleness, and the machine vibrating down to her bones, she was aloft. Daena exulted for a moment, only a moment, and then frantically pushed on, to a bemused sort of mental  _ tut  _ in her head, to take clear that they cleared even just the low rock fence a few hundred feet beyond. Having successfully gained that much altitude—barely eight feet off the wheels if anything—the land fell away before them as she faced the sea, steadily gaining speed and altitude relative to the ground as it fell away before her down to the coast. She zoomed low, barely a hundred feet over an express train on the down track toward Catania, and heard the sharp whistle of the surprised engine driver greeting her, as she gained yet more altitude, and on reaching the sea, swung back inland, toward the southern slopes of Aetna, with Catania stretched out before her to the south. 

The villa had been left far behind. The mountain, the smouldering volcano, loomed before her. It was everything to her heart and soul. The power in it called to her blood, with equal parts of danger, and the very creation of life. Setting a course over the lush and verdant farmland to the south and east of the mountain, she flew due west, until she picked up the narrow gauge of the Circumetnea, and prepared to follow it back home, on her first minor circumnavigation, of the mountain in whose shadow she had created her winter home, with the woman who called her the Princess of Violets. 

For a moment, it seemed like everything in the world was perfect. 

It was only when she landed that she realised she had just made herself into a celebrity into Italy. 


End file.
